


Where on the deck my captain lies (fallen cold and dead)

by Northernflicker



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Coping, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Eventual Happy Ending, Families of Choice, Five Stages of Grief, M/M, Memory Loss, Post-Canon, Recovery, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 19:23:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16582568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Northernflicker/pseuds/Northernflicker
Summary: Captain Davenport and the aftermath, the things he can’t control, and the things he would rather not admit.It isn’t perfect right away. So he takes his boat out to sea to try and find some peace, to feel like himself again, or even just to find out who that really is.





	Where on the deck my captain lies (fallen cold and dead)

His first words are: Lucretia, what have you done?

* * *

  
It's as if his first coherent thought had grabbed him, this ghost from the past that had taken hold of his body, made his mouth say things he hadn't approved of first. This "Captain Davenport, leader of the Starblaster's crew" has charged back into his head and shoved anything else out, discarding what wasn't necessary and only giving orders, only planning action, only thinking strategy.

And for a while, it was enough to sit back and watch as this person he used to be emerged in all his glory, as he became the person people wanted him to be when they looked at him, that everything else was a mistake and could be forgotten about just as easily.

It was enough to pretend that this was always who he had been, that he was welcoming back an old friend rather than watch a stranger speak with his mouth, watching as everyone around him finally happily recognized him after those same people stared with unconcerned eyes for eleven years.

(And no one thought in that time, hey, The director's servant over there, can we help him? Can he write? Can he sign? Is there a spell or potion we can try? No. It's easier to just give him orders. It's easier to laugh awkwardly, or to just avert your eyes.)

But Captain Davenport was him. All those things the Voidfish had told him were things that had happened to him. And those things that happened after, well, that was also him. They were the same person. There was no before and after. There was no separation.

And so the Davenport they respected was the same Davenport they ordered around and saw as a butler. He doesn't want to know how they feel about it now that they know the entire truth. He doesn't want to hear about any cognitive dissonance. He doesn't want to stand in the same place that Davenport had stood, as that imposter had been. He isn't either of them. He's nobody.

And if it was all the same person, it would be easier this way. The Davenport who was their captain was someone they knew and loved. The Davenport from the Bureau of Balance was a joke, not even a factor. He had been taken from his position and for a long time, the only person who spoke directly to him at all was the Director. Everyone else just spoke around him, as if he wasn't even capable of realizing it, or being offended, or anything.

And maybe they were right. But that doesn’t mean it didn't hurt.

* * *

  
I'm leaving, he tells her, the words confident and sure only because he had practiced them over and over again into the mirror beforehand. Three syllables, over and over, lower and lower each time. I'm leav-ing. I'm leav-ing. I'm leav-ing.

(Deep breath, start over, stop being so nervous, that's your trouble, you get so worked up and that just makes it harder, stop getting so worked up over this, stop making everything harder for yourself, Davenport, Davenport. Davenport.)

Ugh.

She says, "Davenport," and he flinches because some stupid instinct embedded in him over all those years of being her goddamn butler knows that that means he's disappointed her, he's done something wrong, he didn't remember something though she must have told him at least twice already.

And it's not that he'll get in trouble, but something else inside him cries out at the sight of her in such a position, like he knows somehow that this is all wrong and it's not his fault. She's not looking at him like that because he did something wrong, she's looking at him because she's Lucretia and he's her captai--

His name sounds like a plea in her mouth, and he knows she has asked for forgiveness seven times over again and he doesn't know how to give it to her. He doesn't know how to forgive her just like he doesn't know how to make his mouth form words even though everyone around him does it so easily, without even thinking.

So he's doing what he always does. He's making it harder for himself.

"You understand," he says, his voice gravelly and sharp from disuse, "I need some time to myself."

She nods. He hates himself for talking. He nods back, and keeps his mouth shut, the shame inside him louder than any word he could ever hope to speak.

* * *

 

  
Merle has questions. Of course he does. It's Merle.

"If this is what you want," Merle says, purposefully not looking at him in a way that means he isn’t convinced.

"It is," The words barely make it out, quiet and raspy. He's so afraid to speak. Afraid of saying his name. Afraid he'll mess it up and end up right back where he started. An endless loop of his own name blocking out any independent thought or notion that _this isn't right._

Every thought he had had would just reroute to his own name, and everything he wanted to say left his mouth in the same manner, until the sheer effort of it was enough to leave him foggy and catatonic.

(Still he spent so long trying to solve this puzzle, in a time where only the Director would talk to him and even she couldn't know what was going on inside his head. No one would know and even he didn't know sometimes, where these thoughts came from. All it ever did was give him a headache, and he couldn't even ask if anyone else had this awful foreboding sense that something was incredibly wrong about all of this.)

Merle nods to himself. He lays a card down on the table. Davenport picks it up as soon as Merle's hands leaves it. He doesn't even have to look. He knows it's the Jack of Hearts. He knows it already, just like he knows Merle. He knows this stupid game and all it's inconceivable rules without even having to think about it, and he knows Merle.

He puts down another card. Go fish. Merle draws ten cards from the pile and sighs. "Pass," he says.

Davenport puts down a color reverse card from the game UNO and watches as Merle replaces all his clubs with hearts and spades with diamonds.

Merle puts down an Ace. Davenport only has a queen. They each take five cards from the piles, their hands contorted in an attempt to hold them all.

"I'm starting up that wilderness thing, you know," Merle says, "You could always come along. It's real quiet in the woods."

Davenport knows. He remembers in the first cycle, when they had gone out camping together in a search for the Light. He looks up and meets Merle's eye. Merle remembers, too. Merle, who somehow still knows him, still wants to know him, still has it in him to offer this patience and kindness, and he doesn't know how to take it.

It would be so easy to tell Merle yes. It would be so easy to just go out into the woods and run away from the noise and politics of civilization. Just him and the Extreme Teen Adventurers, all the little snots who’s mothers made them go along because Merle was a local celebrity that helped saved the universe.

Davenport opens another pack of cards. It's looking like a five-pack game.

He thinks about himself out in the woods. He thinks about himself and the birds and the crickets, the crunching twigs underfoot, the brush of clothes on low hanging branches, snapping fires and axes splitting firewood, and everyone talking, lecturing and talking and asking questions and laughing, and he thinks of himself.

"I'm sorry," Davenport says, laying down another card. He doesn't look at Merle. It feels like he's apologizing for much more than that.

"What for?" Merle laughs, throwing his cards down on the table, "You just won the game!"

Davenport takes a deep breath. He watches as Merle laughs, watches how his smile etches those wrinkles deeper into his face, deeper than Davenport remembers them being, watches how his eyepatch moves against his cheekbone, how his wooden arm gestures in exaggeration in tandem with his real one.

He missed it. Merle went on to live and grow older and Davenport missed it. Davenport wasn't even living in his eleven years apart. It was as if he didn't exist, and now he's back to find the world had changed around him, all these stories and memories from a time that his brain can still barely comprehend, the sheer emptiness of it all. Eleven long years and he can barely remember a thing from it aside from his own name and this nagging feeling of dread.

"Davenport, you lucky bastard," Merle shakes his head, "How do you always do it? I don't even know why I even play this game with you anymore. I should go teach Magnus how to play it instead."

This coaxes a genuine laugh out of him. It's because this is familiar, safe. It's a short, hiccupping thing, but he smiles anyway. They've had this conversation before, over and over again. He knows exactly what to say. 

"Yeah, right," he says, his mouth moving on it's own. "not even you have the patience for that."

"Well, why not start now?" Merle starts to gather the cards, and Davenport knows by the tone of his voice that a sermon is coming, "We have all the time in the world. Plenty of time to start over. Plenty of time to be anyone we want to be."

Davenport looks at the table and tries to believe him. "I want to be someone who always beats you in Yooker," he says, pulling the words from his constricted throat in an attempt to inject humor back into the conversation, "I'd say I've done a pretty good job at it so far."

"Yeah, well," Merle squares the cards, "I've got a lucky hand this time. I can sense it. Pan's going to give me some really good ones."

He should laugh at this, and usually he would, but he's tired. He's tired and he watches as Merle attempts to shuffle the monstrosity of cards from five decks, and he watches as the spill all over the floor in a cloud of fluttering white papers, settling in around them.

He should laugh at that, too, because it's ridiculous. Because he's the captain and he knows Merle, and even if he doesn't, he has all the time in the world to try again. Because Merle is welcoming him in. Because Merle is asking him to.

But it's not that easy. He wishes more than anything that it could be. But he opens his mouth and the words don't come out. He opens his mouth and realizes he doesn't know what to say.

He can't make himself say a word for the rest of the night. Merle doesn't mention it, but he does rest a hand against Davenport's, just in case.

* * *

 

  
"Captain."

He's proud of himself for how fast he turns around. That's him, that's right.

Lup looks oddly serious, but she attempts a smile anyway. "Big trip coming up, huh?"

"Yeah," he says, watching as she comes to sit next to him. "Tomorrow, actually."

"I know," she says, "Just like you to slip off quietly into the night. Taako and I would have at least thrown a party."

"Well, Taako and you can do that," he says, curtly, and flinches at his tone. He shouldn't be short with her. It doesn’t sound like him. Something he would say. But he says it anyway.

"I'm sorry," he says.

She laughs, loud and sharp, "Don't be," she says, nudging him roughly on the shoulder. "Don't apologize for anything. You of all people."

He forces himself to look at her. She smiles again, gentler this time. "I’m gonna miss you, dummy," she says, "it feels like we all just got back together and you're running off again."

Lup, who's here next to him in her body again. Lup, who had the whole crew sobbing when she stepped out of the chamber. Except for him. He had felt some echo of emotion, but mostly he had felt like he wasn't even there. But then again, he was never one to cry.

He opens his mouth to apologize, and closes it. He thinks about what he really means to say. Because Lup had been missing for a long time before they even lost their memories of it, and even when she was back she wasn't until just recently. And at that same time he wasn't really himself, either. They had both been missing. But she had always been who she was.

But what he says is: "I'm sorry."

She sighs, "I know," she says, "And I'm telling you you shouldn't be. But enough of that. I have something for you."

He watches as she fishes something out of her pocket. It's a feather, small and sleek. It's cold and solid in his hands, as if it was made of obsidian. He curls his fingers around it.

"You've heard I started working for the Raven Queen, right?" Lup flips her braid behind her back. "Consider it a going away gift."

"What is it?"

"It's just so Barry and I will know where you are. So we can pop open a portal and come visit from time to time. You didn't think you could get away from us completely, did you?"

He smiles, weakly. "You sure it won't bring dead things to me?"

She cocks her head in thought. "Like pirate skeletons? I don't think so. But consider yourself lucky if it does. And then call for me and Taako and we'll go kick their asses for you."

He laughs, quietly. "Thank you."

They sit in silence for a while, but it's a comfortable silence. He finishes packing what little he has, looks at the list of things he needs to buy, and he looks around the room he had stayed in for all those years, but it hardly feels like he lived a moment here.

Around him, Lup is checking drawers for things he forgot, cleaning as she goes, and generally just being around. Trying to help in any way she can. Just being near him, just in case. But she doesn't say much except to ask him about things he's taking with him, things he's leaving behind. (Are you bringing this? You sure? Why? What box does this go into?)

She doesn't comment on how few things he seems to have, or that stupid Bureau of Balance uniform stuck in his closet. She just helps him fit it all into his suitcase and then she takes the lamp he's leaving behind for her own apartment with Barry.

He watches her work for a while, watches how seamlessly she fits in to everything she does, everywhere she wants to be. She makes a space her own. She knows herself and she isn't afraid of being alone in that, if she has to. She's a powerful, incredible person, and he's honored to have been her captain for all those years.

Somehow, this feels more like the end than defeating the Hunger had been. Though he knows that realistically this isn't the end for any of them, that they'll all continue to be in each other's lives for many years to come. But it’s hard for him to think about the future, to imagine anything about it when even just standing here in this moment seems impossible.

"Do you-," the word die in his throat, his voice frazzled and frayed from so much use after being relatively stagnant for all those years. He wills it back, and she waits, but when he finds it in him to speak again, all he can do is shake his head. "Nevermind."

Lup doesn't seem to know whether to let it go or not. She cradles the lamp in her hands. "None of us think any less of you. You know that, right?"

He shakes his head. "That doesn't-"

"Make it easier, I know.”

He clutches the feather in his hand. He likes the feeling of its coolness against his palm, likes how the rounded edges fold into his fingers.

"You shouldn't--" she sighs, "Please don't give up, Captain. Promise me you'll keep trying."

This he can do. Even the thought of it makes him feel lighter. "I know, Lup," he says, so quietly he wonders if she can hear him. "I'm not giving up. I just need to find something that works better for me.”

Because what he has now isn’t working. Every member of the Bureau of Balance still double takes to see him walking around on his own with his shoulders squared, as if they can hardly reconcile the Davenport from the Voidfish’s story with the Davenport they had known.

And here he was still unable to shake that connection. As if who he was now was the imposter, and the real Davenport was who they had come to know. And he didn’t belong here, anyway, trapped on a monument to what had happened to him, caught between these domes and walls like some mouse in a maze. And everywhere he went on the base seemed at once familiar and unknown to him, as his feet would lead him on some path he seems to know without knowing, though he still can’t fully, clearly remember a day spent on the moon.

And sometimes it would work the other way around, a moment so achingly familiar though he was somehow unable to remember the context, the way to get back to it. Something on the Starblaster had sparked that feeling, as he gazed down to a scratch along the side that stirred some emotion within him, on the precipice of some incredible, unforgettable story of escape and survival that he can’t quite grasp. And so he would stare at the ship’s flank feeling entirely lost and at home, and he would stand on the moon feeling some loyalty to a place he has no clear memory of, just a feeling, and then the realization that he doesn’t quite belong anywhere.

The Starblaster is no longer home. The place he had spent his wordless years was now home to all of his ghosts and shames, and the world planetside seemed so foreign, full of people who know his name. Well, that had been the one thing he had not been allowed to forget. But even with his name, he doesn’t know who is he.

And so he would set out on the open ocean. To run away from anyone who could claim to know him better. From anyone who would want to try.

She smiles, unaware of his thoughts. "Well," she says, "we all want to help you. And we will, no matter what. Just give us a call every once and a while, alright?"

"Okay," he says, distracted by the shadows she casts on the walls, "don't think I won't put you to work, though."

She laughs. "Of course not. I wouldn't expect anything less."

* * *

 

 

The boat is nice. It's small. It's nameless. It's white. Money for it was the only thing he accepted from Lucretia. But he bought it himself, and it's his.

It’s not his new life. It’s the placeholder life. The one he has while he tries to figure the next part out.

It’s not that he doesn’t see a future. But the one he does see is too far away, and he knows he isn’t there yet. It’s Bottlenose Cove, with Merle and his kids, maybe with a tack shop like Merle suggested, and it’s his life. He sees himself smiling. He sees himself content, fitting into Merle’s new life like the way Merle deserves.

But he isn’t that person yet. He’s bitter and hard around the edges and he knows it. He knows by the way his tone is sharp and jagged, by the way he can’t stand it to have people look at him, but the thought of being ignored is somehow worse. He doesn’t know how to be around them, how to be at all. And so maybe if he tosses himself amongst the waves long enough something inside him will shift back into place, some loose brain chemical or missing part, and he can go back and knock on Merle’s door and say _I’m back, I’ve been gone for a long time and missing for even longer than that, but I’m here now._

He wants it so badly. He wants more than anything to be that person who always knew what to say, who could read his crew and maintain connections. But sometimes it takes so much energy just to remember who he is, much less an entire other person. Sometimes it takes so much energy just to push through the nervous repetition of his own name crowding his mouth, to choke out a sentence that anyone else could say with ease.

And so he takes himself and all the chattering _Davenports_ inside his head and he casts them all out to sea, the repetition and the exhaustion and the chain he can’t break, and he wants to go where no one can see him or hear him or even recognize him, and he wants to break through that wall so he can remember how to speak, how to find the right words, and how to be himself again.

And if he can’t, well, there’s always the ocean.

So he takes his maps and supplies for months and months and he stores it all away, and he hangs the few photos he let himself have, and he puts his valuables in a chest that's been charmed to float, and he hangs the pendant Lup gave him around his neck. It's cold against his chest but he likes it that way, laying on top of his heartbeat, his family still with him through this.

The first thing he does is gun the motor. It's exciting. He doesn't know these waters. He doesn't know what he'll find or what he'll see, or who he'll be at the end of it. All he knows is the water before him and the hum of the motor at his feet, and that's all he wants. It's all he's asked for.

And then he anchors in the middle of nowhere, with blue all around him and no one who knows his name or his story. No one to talk to or ask him questions. No one who seems to know him better than he knows himself. He can just be who he is, whoever that is. He can figure that out, too.

But mostly it's just quiet.

He can smell the salt in the air, in the cool wind that buffets the boat. The sun is a comforting warmth on the top of his head, and he enjoys the way it soaks into his skin.

For the rest of the afternoon he sits on the deck and listens to the silence. He wishes he could say that he misses the noise, that he misses the constant hum of people around him. The twins in the kitchen, arguing. Magnus challenging Barry to an arm wrestling contest that he's drunk enough to agree to. Merle describing the cycle's plants to Lucretria while she dutifully draws them out, her pen scratching the paper.

And it would be nice. And maybe he does miss that. But it feels like something familiar rather than something he wants. And right now he needs a change.

He makes lunch for himself and sits by the helm. The boat rocks back and forth, a steady, rhythmic motion. It's dependable. Everything here is something he's prepared for, something he's known to expect.

It's his first day out at sea.

"Captain's log," he says, already breathless. The words come out shaky and unsure, and he can hear his nerves in the space between breaths. Don't freeze up. Don't pause for too long. Don’t think too much. "Captain's Log. Entry...Entry One."

He doesn't really remember how it works. He used to do them all the time on the Starblaster, even when there was no one left to report to. But it was nice to have a routine, nice to have an official catalogue of their experiences and the crew's state. He knows that the crew would go back and listen to them sometimes when he died early in a cycle, when they just needed that reassurance.

The memory makes him pause. Again he is reminded and a bit astounded by the dedication of others. His crew, his crew who loved him and knew him as their leader. For them, nothing's changed. They don't think less of him.

But they must view him differently now. They must. How could they not? After everything that's happened, whether they wanted to or not, they all became other people. It can't be that easy to just fit back together like that.

But what if it is that easy? What if he's out here when he really needs to be back with them, trying to figure out where he stands in this new dynamic?

He feels guilty and he doesn't know why. Guilty for the time he missed, for things that weren't his fault, for failing to be the leader they needed. If he had been stronger, Lucretia wouldn't have felt the need to take it into her own hands. If she hadn't felt like she was alone...

He's not responsible for other people. He knows this, and still he wonders if there was something he could have said to her that let her realize that they could still handle it together. That they were still a team.

But she had thought it would be easier for them to forget. And by doing that she had inadvertently dealt him a wound he was still recovering from, still trying to find a way to live around.

But he didn’t come here to brood. He didn’t come here to think about the past, or what happened to him. In fact, that was everything he was trying to get away from. And it wouldn’t do him any good to just rehash it all here.

So he opens his mouth, and mumbles out a few lines about the weather and the boat and the sea, and then he stops the recording and looks out into the rolling waters with hardly a thought in his head until the sun dips low below the horizon and chases him back inside.

And so he lays in the dark and looks at the way his ceiling moves with the waves, and he thinks about Merle trying to get Mookie to brush his teeth, and he thinks about Magnus carving his ducks, and he thinks about the people they are now, and who they’re going to become, and he can’t help but feel afraid.

* * *

 

  
It’s quiet out on the ocean.

He sits among the rocking waves, tracing words in the air. Things he wants to say. And the ocean doesn’t stay the same, it is constantly moving, breathing in and out with him. Each push of the waves times in perfectly with his heartbeat, and the ocean is a living thing, just like him. It can be cruel and angry just as it can be forgiving and comforting. It can be a terrifying, unjust presence, it can keep him afloat. And it’s good to be a part of something again.

He signs, _my name is_ , and then D-A-V-E-N-P-O-R-T.

The water is an inky black beneath him. Stars glitter along it’s surface and if he searches, he’s sure he could find both moon’s reflections somewhere among the waves.

His hands are slow and clumsy, but they don’t need coaxing the way his voice does. They don’t falter and crack from disuse, and they don’t refuse to move when he needs them most.

 _House_ , he signs, _boat. Ocean_. M-E-R-L-E.

He misses Merle.

But this isn’t Merle’s journey. The story is about him, and he really really deserves it. A story about him. Something he can have for himself, something that isn’t out on display for the rest of the world to see. And maybe once he has this, he can finally be satisfied. He can finally stop searching. But he doesn’t know what it is he’s looking for yet, and he doesn’t know when or where he’ll find it.

 _How are you?_ he signs, _Good. Bad. Happy._

And then: _Tired. Sad. Angry._

He suspended above miles and miles of water and life beneath him. It’s almost like flying. There’s all sorts of monsters and creatures in the cold salt water, all surviving and glowing and stretching out to terrible heights. He imagines their scales gleaming in the moonlight, slick and sharp and cold against his warm soft hand. He imagines webbed fins, double eyelids, bioluminescence and rows and rows of sharp pointed teeth.

And himself, perched on a boat above it all, rolling on the waves that keep him suspended. And himself, caught between continents, back from space, back from the abyss. And himself, who had lost it all without knowing, and somehow had it all handed back to him with no action of his own, at the mercy of others for all those years. And himself. And himself.

He looks out into the water. He sees his own reflection, rippling in time with the waves hitting the boat, illuminated by the orange glow of his lamp beside him. He sees himself, tired, stubborn eyes, dark and haunted and yet still reaching. He sees the wrinkles forming, and he sees the effects of ten years of aging.

He almost wants to reach out and touch it, dispelling the view. It doesn’t feel like that could be him, all those gradual changes that hit him all at once. It doesn’t seem right that he didn’t get to see himself age. That he didn’t get to see the gray hair appear at his temples, that he didn’t get to hear Merle tease him about it in a way that they both knew was a thin disguise for joy. Aging would mean something. It would mean permanence. Progress. Change. That they were on this plane for good this time. That they could celebrate that.

But instead he woke up one day to find the world changed around him, and himself as well. He didn’t get to see the crows feet start to form, he didn’t get to enjoy their last cycle until about ten years had been pulled out from under him. And now he’s left looking at himself, at this man who stares back and can hardly say a word, and it doesn’t feel fair at all.

He doesn’t get to tease Merle about the old petals tangled into his beard, and he doesn’t get to drink Magnus under the table, and he doesn’t get to discuss literature with Lucretia. Because he gets this instead. A cold open ocean, a single light in the dark, and his own face, still and drawn and aged.

 _Apology,_ he signs. _Memory. Forgiveness._

But it’s hard to do and harder to think about, so he sits back into the night and closes his eyes and feels the cold air on his face, and he thinks about the nature of the stars burning out long before he could ever know, and burning far beyond him still.

And it’s quiet. It’s still. It’s like there isn’t another soul in the world. Just him and the ocean and a face that doesn’t quite look like his. Just himself and the life he didn’t get to have, that grief inside him. Mourning lost time and mourning himself though he still is out there, terrifyingly so, tossed amongst the waves, tossed amongst the darkness, clinging to himself, alive alive alive. Somehow still. Despite everything. Because of it. He’s here. He’s here.

He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

Somehow the silence seems louder now, because of it. It’s oppressive and obscene, filling the room, following him into his bed. It presses up against the walls, down on his throat, all the weight of the things he cannot say, locked in a chamber miles below the surface. The pressure builds with each inhale, and each exhale he and the ocean take together is shorter and shorter, less and less.

He stares into the darkness. He can hear the ocean outside. The rest of the world seems to fall away, leaving him suspended in soupy nothingness. He could call for help and no one would hear him.

But then again, he knows he doesn’t have the voice to try.

* * *

 

  
He forgets to do the next Captain’s log. He’s fallen out of the routine, and it’s not like there’s anyone else around to listen to it or get any use out of them. At least the ones on the Starblaster were adventurous and daring, about uncharted lands and puzzles to figure out. But this is just the epilogue to the adventure, and even he knows that no one will want to hear about that

And it’s nice. It’s nice to be by himself, whoever that is. It’s nice to do things on his own time, and not worry about taking care of others. It’s good to figure out how to cook for himself, or just eat beef jerky on his bed, and there’s no one that can tell him no. He has no job to do, no boss to impress, no deadlines to meet.

He doesn’t have the Institute breathing down his neck, he doesn’t have a crew to interview and compile, he doesn’t have progress reports to type up. He just has himself and the sea. It feels like the first time in a long time that he’s allowed to just exist.

He can’t remember the last time it was like this. And the thought brings a sudden warmth to him despite the morning chill. Not because of his sudden freefall from responsibilities, but the fact that his mind immediately brought him back to his work at the IPRE. That was who he was. The Starblaster’s mission was his. He poured everything he had into that mission, everything he was.

But he ignores the thought that follows and instead focuses on the revelation. He went from the Starblaster’s deck to the ocean, with nothing in between. There’s no way those years could do that to him, undo everything he was, his entire identity. There’s no way he could become something like that, that that potential was ever really inside him.

As if all he’s been doing this whole time is walking around as an idiot masquerading as something he’s not, a captain, a leader, a pragmatic, steady force. As if that was all a farce, and when the Starblaster was stripped away all he was left with was a bumbling, thoughtless creature that could only trip over it’s own feet and bleat it’s own name over and over again.

And that was who he was. And everything else was a sham to hide that inner truth, that he wasn’t a leader. He was a fool from day one. The Bureau’s Davenport was the best version of him, because at least then he didn’t have the higher cognitive skills to know how to make everything worse.

How long would Lucretia have let him live like that? Did she really think that that life would be better for him? That he would be better left in some sort of fugue state, unable to hold on to an intelligent thought or observe his own state of being? That patronizing him and ordering him around would be better than death? At least then he could have kept his dignity.

At least then he would have a memory that others could look back on instead of just...this. This failure and then the inability to get back up from it. Now he’s just left floundering. It’s sad, sadder than the eleven years ever were.

They must be thinking it when they look at him. How could they not? How could any of his crew ever respect him again, knowing what had become of him? There’s no way they could look at him the same. It’s better for him to get away. To be out here. Exiled. Isolated.

Is that who he is? Someone who ran away from it when he couldn’t face the people around him knowing what had become of him? The shame he brings entirely on himself is just  too much, and knowing they don’t judge him for it just makes it worse.

And that was who he was now. That anger, that shame, it doesn’t go away. It was there even before he could recognize it. And it’s here now, paired alongside every thought or plea that things could be different. It’s there with every trip of his words, every stutter or pause, with all the effort it takes to get the words out.

What does he do now?

Every word out of his mouth exhausts him. And he doesn’t know if he could explain it even if he tried. Even the kindness and patience his crew offers him seems like they’re mocking him somehow. He should be able to handle this on his own. He got himself into this. He has to get himself out.

The Davenport from before would know what to do, he would command his crew with words that made him feel bigger than he was. He would stare up at those stone judges and tell them that he’s earned a bit of wrath, and he’s going to protect it, shelter that flame with his own hands until it grows enough to burn his palms. And he would be proud of this anger inside him, and so Davenport is proud of it now. It’s quaking through his veins. It tells him he’s alive. Even if he is smaller than he’s ever felt, tossed amongst the waves.

The Davenport before would say: Davenport.

* * *

  
_“Hey.”_

_He doesn’t look up. He should. They don’t have time to hold grudges. It’s not good for the crew’s morale. These days, morale is all they have._

_“Watcha doing?”_

_“Plotting our next course,” he probably says, or, “trying to map out where the light had fallen,” or, “nothing much.”_

_But it doesn’t matter what he says. Merle’s response is the same. He heaves out a sigh that seems much too big for him, and sits down next to him on the deck of the Starblaster, the maps scattered on the floor like a barrier between them._

_It’s an unspoken invitation for Davenport to join him, and so they can talk about their feelings and how Parley is going or whatever. Just like Davenport staying awake at the helm after the crew had gone to bed was an invitation, just how Merle coming to find him was another. That’s all they do, trade openings back and forth. But there’s never enough time._

_Ha. That was the one thing they had too much of._

_He knows that Merle will wait here for him for as long as he needs to. If he wants to talk all night, or not at all. He would be perfectly fine with watching Davenport look at his maps in silence all night._

_So, finally, he sighs and sits back. He gives in. The silent surrender to the conversation ahead._

_“It’s a nice night,” he says._

_It really isn’t. The humidity is awful, and the only reason why Merle hadn’t left them for Parley yet is because Magnus got a snake bite the other day that he wants to keep an eye on. That’s the only thing keeping him on this hellish cycle, the air damp and stale, everything else sluggish with the heat._

_Davenport wipes the sweat from his brow, almost automatically at this point. Merle takes the time to clean his glasses with his robes, with slow, careful movements._

_“This isn’t going to be a sermon, is it?”_

_Merle laughs. “Why? Do you want one?’_

_“I just know that look on your face.”_

_“Don’t say that, captain. You haven’t seen that much of me these days.”_

_“I know.”_

_A cicada screeches over head in sharp, reverberating pulls. The air is stagnant, settling heavily on his shoulders. It seems as if the planet could hardly keep moving under such a temperature._

_“Do you want to talk about it?”_

_“No.”_

_“Why not?”_

_“There’s nothing to say. You already know the crew misses you. And that includes me. Do you need to hear me say it again?”_

_“It wouldn’t hurt.”_

_“Well. I miss you. But what you’re doing is so much more important than that. Are you happy now?”_

_“Are you?”_

_He squints at him. “What?”_

_“I think you needed to say it.”_

_“I don’t. I already knew that. This is for you.”_

_“Well then, thank you, Captain Davenport, for telling me what I needed to hear.”_

_He huffs out a sigh. “You’re impossible. Stick to the plants, next time.”_

_A suggestive eyebrow raise. “Or stick into--”_

_“No. Definitely don’t do that.”_

_He laughs, quiet and slow in the night. Whatever tension between them seems to lessen, somewhat._

_“Why are you even up so late?”_

_Davenport shrugs. “It’s just quiet, he says. It seems like the only time that this planet seems to exhale.”_

_“I hear ya. Or at least, I wish I could. Every bird in the forest seems to wake up and squawk at the same time.”_

_“Really? I wasn’t aware. I thought that was just Taako.”_

_Merle laughs and nudges Davenport’s shoulder. Davenport smiles. He always knows how to make Merle laugh._

_“Don’t let him hear you say that,” Merle laughs. “He won’t cast silence on the ship anymore and then we’ll all be sorry. Spell slots, man.”_

_“Well, it’ll still be worth it,” Davenport decides. “Sometimes it’s good to have some noise around here.”_

_Merle quiets. It’s hard to see in the darkness, but he can still make out the shapes of trees and vines in the forest beyond. He imagines the soft moss on the roots, the forest floor slick with decaying leaves, the heat having driven out every other form of life, hunting even the slightest bit of noise until only the suffocating stillness of night was left. Even during the day he could feel the heat of the forest billowing onto his face from the deck of the ship._

_He feels the sweat on the small of his back._

_“How many times has it been?”_

_“Forty three.”_

_He stares down at his maps. His hands. Nothing he can do can help Merle. Every cycle, he gets up and tries again. Every cycle he sticks around for as much as he needs to, to keep the crew stable, and then he’s gone. His ghost at the face of the ship, a collection of dust and particles in the shape of someone who once used to be so real and alive._

_And then one day, Merle is gone. They all know what happened to him, but that doesn’t make it easier._

_“It’s quiet without you,” he says, his voice hardly a murmur. “We hardly know how to take care of your plants.”_

_Merle hums in agreement._

_“And I don’t know what to do,” Davenport confesses, “It feels like you should be in my place instead. You- You’re so important.”_

_“And you’re not?”_

_“Not in the same way. I can’t help us like you can. You’re our only chance of understanding this enemy.”_

_“And you’re the only one that can fly the Starblaster.”_

_He laughs. The heat sticks in the back of his throat. He coughs. “No. You can learn a skill like that. But no one else can be Merle Highchurch.”_

_“Well,” Merle reaches out to touch Davenport’s elbow, “that would be really funny if they could.”_

_“Shut up.”_

_“A whole ship full of Merle Highchurches.”_

_“No.”_

_“God,” Merle laughs, “god, what an image.”_

_“You’re ruining the moment,” Davenport laughs, “stop making me think about it.”_

_“I can’t make you do anything, Captain.”_

_Davenport shakes his head, the grin still lingering on his lips. He shakes his head again. “You always do this,” he says, staring down at his lap. “You make me say something really deep and then you come out with something ridiculous, and then you hit me with something like that-- I don’t get it.”_

_“Don’t get what?”_

_“How you--” he gestures, uselessly. “How you can be like this, so carefree, so in tune to what others need, even when you’re not here you still are. I see you everywhere I go.”_

_Merle moves to sit closer to him. :I never claimed to understand anything, he says, I just do what I can with what I have.”_

_Davenport looks at his maps. “And you do it so well.”_

_Merle reaches out and places a hand on Davenport’s shoulder until he finally looks at him. “You’re doing enough,” he says, “no one can ask for more.”_

_“They should. I can give them more.”_

_“Don’t. Keep it for yourself.”_

_“I don’t deserve it,” he breathes, “this mission is everything. It deserves everything I have, everything I can give. It could determine the fate of the universe. Who am I to keep myself from that?”_

_“This mission doesn’t define you.”_

_“It has to. I can’t hold back. If I falter, it could all be over.”_

_Merle lets his hand fall. He looks sad. “I’m sorry you see it that way, he says, I think you’re so much more than that. I’ve seen you be more than that.”_

_“Yeah. Well.” He gathers his papers. “You’re never here, anyway, so what would you know?”_

_He stands, clutching his maps in one hand. The stillness of the forest beyond and their sleeping crew inside forces them to keep their voices low._

_Merle frowns, “come on now,” he says, rising to meet Davenport’s eyes._

_“Forty three times, Merle,” Davenport says, “Should I apologize? Will that really make any of this better?”_

_Merle pulls him into a hug. Davenport frowns, but he doesn’t pull away. He buries his face in the crook of Merle’s neck and takes a deep, shuddering breath. It shakes down his throat, dispelling what last grips of anger he might have had, leaving only this strange exhaustion instead. This powerful grief for all forty three Parleys that ended with Merle’s death, deaths he didn’t get to see, deaths Merle had to go through alone. Was he afraid? How could he be the one comforting Davenport now, after having gone through all that by himself?_

_He squeezes his eyes shut, his hands fisting the fabric of Merle’s robes. He can feel Merle’s arms around him, solid and steady and sure, and even though it’s too hot to be standing this close, having this contact, he does it anyway._

_Merle. Merle who is everything. Merle who is at once so smart and so dense, who always says the wrong thing at the right time, the wrong thing that turns out to be the right thing in disguise. Merle who is always observing others, learning more. The heart of the ship. His heart._

_And it’s enough just to have him near. Just to hold him, to hear him breathing. Something so simple like this makes him want to cry. He wants to go back to the first cycle when they would just go camping in search of the light, when he didn’t know what he knew now, when he didn’t have to bear the weight of saying goodbye over and over again._

_I just want to be near you, he thinks. A single, heartbreaking thought, yet such a simple yearning. He just wants to be in Merle’s space, enjoy the things he enjoys, see the things he sees. He just wants to have him with him through this. If the universe could just grant him this one thing, it would be enough._

_But he pulls away, and offers a watery smile. “You made me drop my maps.”_

_Merle laughs and bends down to pick them up, “My apologies,” he says, “you just look like you needed that.”_  
  
_Davenport looks at him. His face. His eyes. His wire glasses. His arms full of Davenport’s maps, expectant, ready to meet him halfway. To go wherever he leads._

_“I did,” he says, softly. “You always know exactly what I need.”_

_Merle smiles. “That just means I know you.”_

_“You do,” he says, quietly, “you do know me.”_

* * *

  
He wakes up with tears running down his face.

* * *

  
“Hello?”

He opens his mouth, but only the beginning of a noise comes out, not even a word.

“Davenport! I’d know that silence anywhere!”

 _Oh,_ he thinks _that’s a little..._

Merle laughs awkwardly, “Oh, uh,” he says, “that’s maybe not the best thing to say.”

“No shit,” he bites out. _A decade of being nearly nonverbal will do that to a person_.

He leans against the cabin wall. He doesn’t know why he called. He hates stone calls, and he hates talking, and it’s not like Merle could help him anyway. Maybe he’s hoping that it could be like old times, that Merle could make him feel better in the same way he used to always be able to, that they could make some weird plant jokes and know that everything would be okay between them.

“Well,” Merle says, “this conversation got off to a weird start.”

 _Yeah,_ he thinks, _no shit._ He grits his teeth. He hears someone laughing in the background.

But this isn’t the Starblaster. It isn’t the Starblaster, and he isn’t himself, and even Merle isn’t the same as he used to be. He says things differently now, affected by the slight accent of this plane’s language. His jokes are more brash and insensitive, less tactful, and he doesn’t always know what to say the same way he used to.

“How are you,” he says, the words come out flat, no inflection, but Merle sighs anyway.

“You got me at a good time,” he says, “I just got back from a retreat. And boy, it was a long one.”

He makes a noise in the back of his throat. To show that he’s listening, maybe.

“Oh!” Merle says, “But here’s some news. Lord Sterling wants me to help with a place for displaced dwarves. He’s gonna give them Bottlenose Cove and he wants me to help run it and fix the place up a bit.”

Davenport blinks. That’s a lot of responsibility. But it’s not like Merle would say no. He’s the peacemaker, and this makes peace. It makes sense.

After a long moment, he forces himself to say, “Wow.” The word seems to tire him out. He hears someone call Merle’s name in the background.

“Yeah,” Merle says, “It’ll be a change from Extreme Teen Adventures, but a good change. You know what my title is?”

He sighs. _Earl Merle._

“Earl Merle!” Merle laughs, “I think it’s great, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“It should be really good,” Merle continues, “A place to settle down. Somewhere for the kids to stay when they’re here. And somewhere for you to dock, too. We’re right on the water.”

He opens his mouth. Words are hard for him today. Everything his brain thinks doesn’t seem to make it to his mouth. He coughs into his sleeve.

“You should come on by,” Merle says, gently, “it’s right on the map. I’d open my door for you anytime.”

“I know,” he says, tired, _I know you would._

Merle sighs. “Keep calling me, would you?” he seems distracted, “it’s good to hear from you. Lets me know you’re still out there, and all that.”

He stares down at the sun bleached deck. “Where else would I be?”

“I don’t know,” Merle says, “but it’s nice to have a reminder.”

He shakes his head. If Merle is trying to say he misses him, then he can just say that. If he’s trying to say that he’s gotten used to his presence, he can just say that. But this doesn’t give him anything.

“I will,” he lies, “I’ll keep you-” _Updated._ The word doesn’t come.

After a long awkward moment, Merle says, “There must not be much service out on the ocean, huh?

Someone says something in the background. It sounds like Mavis. In a minute, sweetie, Merle tells her.

He waits, but Davenport can’t get his mouth to work. And even if he could, he doesn’t know what he would say. He lets out a frustrated breath.

“Alright, well,” Merle says, eventually. “I’d better get back to what I was doing. Please stop by and visit sometime, alright? It’s a little lonely without you here to beat me in cards all the time.”

He sighs. “Sure, Merle.” The words seem to drag out of his throat, dry and lifeless.

He says goodbye. The line goes dead. He fights the urge to throw his Stone of Farspeech into the ocean, throw himself in after it for thinking such a stupid, stupid thing that he could just open his mouth and talk like he used to, that this could be anything like it used to.

That conversation was like pulling teeth. He doesn’t know why he thought it would make him feel better. Merle has a life of his own, he had one even before they got their memories of the Starblaster back. Of course he would go back to it without a problem.

A house on the beach. A community. A family. That’s all Merle wanted, really. And now he has it, Earl Merle of Bottlenose Cove. His two children running around. It’s perfect for him.

And he sounds good. Busy, but content. He’s out there finding ways to help people, giving them home and a new start, rebuilding his relationship with his kids, making up for lost time. He’s helping people. And Davenport is really proud of him for that. It’s what Merle deserves. He was always a good leader, even on the Starblaster. He knew how to keep people calm, how to find solutions. He’s doing everything Davenport should be doing, but better.  
  
He lets out a sharp, bitter laugh. It’s useless to be jealous of Merle. It’s a caustic, petty thing. But still he feels it crawling around inside his brain. He’s out here doing nothing and feeling overwhelmed by it, while Merle is the one who can have a life that matters. Merle deserves it more than he does, anyway.

This is a bad train of thought. It’s not helpful to him to think this way. But he doesn’t know why he thought Merle would be sitting around doing nothing except waiting for him to call. He doesn’t know why he thought Merle would understand it even if Davenport couldn’t tell him. It’s not that easy anymore.

He should know better. He should know better than to think that they could go back to that, when all they could do was trade openings back and forth until they found the right moment. Because maybe there won’t be another moment like that again, and he missed it. Maybe his whole life is a series of missed moments, times he wasn’t there when it really mattered.

He gets out a fishing rod and casts the line and tells himself to stop thinking. None of this will help him now. It’s just him and the ocean, and no room for his thoughts to intervene. None of this will be any good if he can’t find a way to verbalize it.

Ugh. So much communication relies on his ability to articulate himself. Over the Stone it’s impossible to read body language or to sign anything, leaving him feeling more helpless than he already is.

Something tugs at his line. He pulls at it, but the feeling goes away.

So he can be like this for now, if he needs to. He can be like this and no one can tell him otherwise. They won’t really get what he’s going through, and he doesn’t need them to. They did just fine without him, after all. They could do it again.

Everyone has their own lives and if he needs this time to himself, then good. Then he’ll take it, and any other time he might need, and anything else he can think of. He doesn’t have to do anything they ask of him. He doesn’t have to dock at Bottlenose Cove or pretend to be more well adjusted than he really is. He can just sit on his boat and be angry all day and that’s just fine, really.

It’s just fine that he feels this way, that this restless frustration propels him, that he can’t seem to find a solution to it no matter what he tries. That the state he’s in only pushes him further into isolation, that he doesn’t want other people to see him like this. This is all fine and exactly what he needs and so if his Stone could stop ringing that would be great, really.

He glances over to it. It’s Merle. His breath feels tight in his throat but he ignores the call and instead focuses on this cagey, kicking feeling inside his chest.

It’s as if his anger could come out crawling through his ribcage. It’s with every breath he breathes, and he’s suddenly so consumed with it that it takes all he has to remember to pull his line out of the water and put the rod away.

His hands are clenched into fists at his side until his knuckles hurt from the tension of it. But it wouldn’t matter if the rod was put away just like nothing on this boat matters. It was a stupid thing he bought himself to try and convince himself that any of it would make him feel better. But it won’t.

He’s still angry. He never stopped. His sin was wrath and he has carried it with him since then, until it transformed into an entirely different animal. But it’s comfortable. It’s familiar. He knows how to be angry.

He doesn’t know how to be Captain Davenport or any version of the man. He doesn’t know how to be a leader or a friend or someone who says the right things or can even say a word at all. He doesn’t know how to identify what he’s feeling but he feels it anyway, and he uses it, and it’s all he knows how to. Wrath is a welcomed change. It’s energy, it’s motivation, it sends him pacing the decks back and forth, thinking about all the things he was owed and wasn’t allowed to have, thinking about himself for getting to such a state.

But he doesn’t have Merle here to put a calming hand on his shoulder, to put words to the things he wants to say. He doesn’t have Merle here to tell him what he’s really thinking, to make him work through this in a way only Merle could. Because he left Merle on land and he refuses to go back to him until he can work this out himself.

Because he can work this out himself. It’s the only thing he should be able to do. If he can’t be a friend or a captain or even someone who speaks, then he should at least know himself. He shouldn’t need others to work through his emotions for him. It’s his emotions. It’s the only thing he has entirely to himself.

And so he wants to own this. He wants to own this turmoil inside of him and he’s proud of it for finally showing it’s head. He deserves this just like he deserves this exile and he can tackle this beast himself. It’s his journey. It’s the only thing he owes himself, after everything he had gone through.

He can’t count on others to pick up the pieces. He can’t count on others to understand something he had gone through alone. He can’t count on others who had mocked him when he was in such a state, even if they didn’t remember who he was.

They’re only nice to him now because they remember who he was, he thinks, and the thought makes him sick. The only reason they stick around is because of who he used to be.

It’s a disgusting, ugly thought, rolling around inside his head. A part of him knows that that can’t be true, that it isn’t true, that he should call Merle and let him tell him how it really is, that he should believe it when Merle speaks the truth.

But maybe he likes being bitter, and maybe he likes having a real reason to be out here. Maybe he can be silent and mean and angry, and allowed to be so. It feels like something that’s been coming for a long time.

And so his anger keeps him awake. It keeps him alive, surviving this, surviving everything that had come before him. It tells him that he can get out the other end, and so he clings to it. It’s the only thing he knows that feels right, that feels like something he’s supposed to do.

The waves grow short and choppy, the wind slicing at his face. But he likes it. It makes him feel alive, more alive than he’s ever been. His heart is beating and the cold mist is spraying his face and the winds push the waves onward and he is out here surviving it, living in this element.

It’s raw and brutal in a way he needs it to be. He needs the tang of salt on his tongue and he needs the sun on his skin and the bite of the wind against him. He needs the chill of the water and the endless expanse of space before him and he needs to be on this raft knocked around by the waves, angry and warm and alive in a way that the ocean could never touch.

And so he ignores his Stone of Farspeech when it rings and he maintains his boat and that’s all he needs to do. He sets out to new waters until the speed and the wind is all he can think about, and he charts his maps and takes notes on his surroundings and that is who he needs to be right now, Davenport the Sailor, not Davenport the lost soul, the unadjusted, floundering aftermath.

For the first time in a long time, he smiles and means it. It’s all teeth with the sharp spray of salt in the air, but he means it.

* * *

  
The waves lift him in a way that’s almost like flying. The wind in his hair and the constant rocking reminded him just what it was he had likes so much about the Starblaster in the first place. It was freeing to have his control so limited. Every moment he spent out here was from a careful agreement with nature.

The air turns sharp and cold, biting at his exposed skin and he revels in it. The sun is out but he can hardly feel it. It can’t reach him now that he’s no longer in space, in it’s domain. He’s no longer tossed amongst the planets and cosmos, no longer at the whim of the universe. Everything he does here is concrete, with a cause and effect. The rope burns on his hands and the peeling skin on his nose are all things he chose to have happen to him. He is still surviving out here. Others may be able to live a calmer life, but he isn’t one of them.

He needs this. This chaos, this unpredictability. He needs to be able to rely on himself after spending so long without it. He needs to remember something that used to be second nature, that used to be such a big part of him that he could barely function without it.

So he’s a captain again. A captain of his ship, of himself, even without a crew. He’s a captain because he used to know more about that than anything else, because that’s all he was needed for. He’s a captain, and he knows how to do this like he knows the waves and the pull of the tides and the call of the wind on his face.

Everything he lost he can get back. Everything he forgot he can remember. And he can be who he used to be. And he can be who other people want him to be. He can get it back. He can find it again. He just has to try hard enough. He has to stare out into the wind until his eyes sting, until his hands stop shaking, until that fiery core in his chest is the only thing that can keep him warm, awake, afloat.

And he doesn’t need other people to tell him how to do that. It’s something he should know himself, intrinsically. It’s an anger that carried him through one hundred  
years of being hunted. It’s an anger that helps him survive. And it’s an anger that tells him he’s alive, no matter what the ocean or the universe wants.

* * *

   
The ropes make his hands bleed.

* * *

  
“Captain’s Log: My anger keeps me up at night. It shakes me down to my bones. Merle wouldn’t like to see me this way. But Merle isn’t here, and I- I get to keep this. All for myself. Don’t I deserve at least that much?”

* * *

  
“Yeah, Lup, I’m doing alright.” (It’s hard to sleep at night without thinking)

“It’s just the wind making it hard to hear you.” (I’m ignoring what you just said, sorry.)

“Yeah. It’s been good. I really like it out here.” (We both know you can see right through me.)

“I know. I miss you all too.” (We’ve been missing each other for over a decade. Sometimes I even still miss people when they’re right in front of me.)

“Stop by anytime.” (I don’t want you to see me like this, but if you must. Even if it does feel like an invasion of privacy.)

“Bye.”

* * *

  
Here’s a play told in three parts.

In the first part, he is young, brave and idealistic and sure of himself. He is all set up for the hero’s journey, and is still foolish enough to believe that this is the epic his life will be staked on. That these are the conflicts that will test him, mold him, change him. That these are the moments he will look back on as the hardest of his life. A motley crew, a modest ship, a destiny bigger than the seven of them. It’s a quest given by the gods. It’s the setup for a grand adventure, a cosmic struggle between good and evil, and he is at the helm.

And then an intermission.

In the second part, he is unwritten. He is tired but still young, and didn’t quite expect the play to go on this long. He is a character that has been written out of the main character’s spot and handed a supporting role in his own hero’s quest. He is now the goofy sidekick, the tragic downfall, the warning sign. His role, taken away and handed back as something lesser. The author is also a character, who knew? He must have done something to anger her to deserve a fate like this.

In the third part, there is no writer. She has gone off to cover more exciting adventures, more worthy stories. She does no longer concern herself with him, and he has run off the pages on his own volition. His conflict was taken out from under him and solved by those around him. His methods must not have been good enough, his character arc not as compelling, his plot not nearly what it needed to be. His conflict was solved and the evil was defeated  as he is reduced to the chauffeur of the real heroes and now he is a character without a story, a hero without an enemy, a tragedy with no moral. He is sent adrift, unwritten from his story, an the story was never really about him in the first place.

In the stage production, his entire life is saved as a flashback to give the real heroes more emotional depth, tie up some plot holes and set up for the real finale.

And now he’s on the ocean, calm and quiet and empty, while the play goes on and on above his head, a story much more deserving to be told.

* * *

  
Merle must have a sixth sense for these type of things, because one day Lup has deposited him on the deck, and takes one sweeping look at Davenport, and then says “Call me and I’ll come pick you up, okay? I actually answer my stone, unlike some people.”

“Can do,” Merle shrugs, calm and nonchalant as ever.

Lup’s gaze travels back to Davenport again, one last probing glance before she rips open a portal and steps through, leaving the two of them in silence.

Davenport knows how he must look. Wild and unkempt, a problem to be solved. Someone who needs Merle to come in and take this out of his scabbed over hands, to calm his gaze and make him say the things he doesn’t know he needed to say until the words are already out.

But he doesn’t want to do that. He doesn’t want to have the conversation he knows is coming, so he stares at Merle like a caged animal, and the boat feels smaller than it ever has. The ocean falls to silence, as if to make the space even larger between them. In another life, he would sit on the deck and offer a opening. In another life, he would open a pack of cards and invite Merle to sit. In another life, they wouldn’t need to talk at all.

But Davenport is too busy feeling betrayed years after the betrayal happened, as if all the emotions he didn’t get to feel for all those years are finally catching up to him.

And it’s a lot, all at once. It’s a lot to sort through and so he doesn’t have time to listen to Merle try to distract him or give him some life lesson or plant metaphors. He doesn’t have time to watch as Merle is more collected and calm and better at coping than him. He doesn’t need the reminder.

And so he stands on the other end of the deck and he feels the anger in his chest and he wants to say something that would hurt Merle, drive him away and let him isolate himself the way he needs to. He wants to say something that Merle wouldn’t automatically see through and he wants to say something that would strike with the same intensity he feels inside, sink its teeth in and bite down with all the frenzied desperation of an animal caught in a trap and forced to gnaw its own leg off.

Because that’s what hurting Merle would be. It would be hurting a part of himself.

So he opens his mouth and his anger is still there, a wildfire inside him, and his throat is constricted with a sudden helpless sadness, and he doesn’t know how to ask for help so he says, “You’re dressed way too lightly for this weather. We’re not at the beach. It’s cold out on the open water.”

Merle smiles, weakly. He can see inside Davenport a way no one else can. “I can see that now,” he says, lightly, “I guess it’s too late to chart a course for land?”

It’s an opening. Come home with me. Take a break. Find a way to stand on land again. The ocean will wait for you.

But instead of taking it, he says, “should have thought about that.”

“Well,” Merle rubs his arms, “you’ll take pity on me eventually. Can’t have me freezing to death out here.”

If he gave Merle a blanket or some clothes, it would be a return of that opening. A show of kindness. And he will, once he finds a way to do it that doesn’t accidentally mean that he wants to talk about his feelings. Because he doesn't. Because he can't. Because-

“Mm-hmm.” Davenport moves past him and sets down the anchor.

Merle catches him by the elbow as he passes again, he glances down at Davenport’s sore palms, a healing spell already on his lips.

Davenport rips his hands away, glares at him. He wants it to hurt. He wants the reminder that he can still do this himself. And Merle doesn’t get to take that away from him whenever it’s convenient for him. He doesn’t get to take that away and then leave again.

Merle raises an eyebrow. “Lots of nerve endings on your palms,” he says, “lots of opportunity for infection.”

“I’m taking care of it,” Davenport says.

Merle doesn’t say anything to that. He sits on the deck and looks out on the ocean, lost in thought. He only looks up a few minutes later when Davenport throws a blanket at the back of his head, but their eyes don’t meet.

* * *

  
He works on the engine in the back of the ship and he leaves Merle on the deck and he doesn’t want to talk, because if he gets in Merle’s radius he would start telling him some seemingly random anecdote about his kids or some funny, inconsequential memory from the Starblaster. Something to get Davenport’s guard down, something innocent as an opening for what he really wants to say.

He doesn’t want to connect to Merle in this way, but he can’t avoid him forever. So they sit on the deck and eat their dinners in silence and look out on the water as the sun starts to set. Seeing him there reminds Davenport a bit about his outline when Merle went to Parlay, and how Davenport would sit next to it at times as if it meant something, as if some part of him was still there.

But it was a ghost, and it would stay that way until the Hunger had killed him again, and it wasn’t any more real when the ghost at the ship was finally gone.

“The last time I saw John,” Merle says, “just after we defeated the Hunger, the sunset looked just like this.”

Davenport looks out to sea, at the splash of soft oranges and reds burning along the horizon.

“The sun was setting. Something dying out. And when the last light hit the water, I looked over, and he was gone.”

The waves are quiet against the boat, soft sighs at every contact. The ocean is quiet but never still, and Davenport can almost see the moment inside his head, that careful suspension of noise and chaos.

“Did he say anything to you?” Davenport looks over carefully, at the dying light caught on the rims of Merle’s glasses.

Merle’s eye is distant as he looks out to the water. “He said: we don’t have to talk. Let’s just watch this together.”

So Davenport looks out at the sunset and sighs. And so they don’t say a word. They just sit and watch it together as the sun slips below the water. Like some tribute to the past. Another part of the story that’s over.

And when darkness falls, Merle is still there beside him.

* * *

_  
He feels the wind tousle his hair, but it’s been like that for so long that he hardly notices it. “Do you-” he pauses, unsure of what he really wants to ask. “Do you think we’ll be able to have normal lives after this? Nobody’s ever had a life like ours, there’s no rule book. I don’t even know where to begin.”_

_Merle lays down a card. “Why would you want a normal life? Normal lives suck!”_

_Davenport laughs. Of course Merle would say that. He can hardly imagine Merle with a normal life after everything that had happened, how could he?_

_“Like, this game,” Merle continues, “We play this game, we just sit here. It’s just a way to kill time! C’mon, Skipper, you don’t want to just kill time all the time!"_

_He sighs. Merle is right. Merle is always right. “ know, I just- How do you wanna live, Merle? Like, I don’t have a- this mission has been my life for a century. I don’t know what I want to do.”_

_Merle thinks for a moment. “You wanna know what I’d like to do?” he says, “I’d like to move to the beach.”_

* * *

  
“I’m sorry,” Davenport says to him the next morning, with the air cool and crisp in the fog.

Merle smiles, his eye crinkling in the corners. Something in the air just feels heavier, quieted by something. Maybe it’s just Merle’s presence. He always has just what Davenport needs, even when he doesn’t give anything at all.

Davenport sighs. Something in his chest feels heavy and dislodged, sinking down deep into the pit of his stomach. The breath shakes down to his core, bringing tears to his eyes, and he shakes his head. He can hear the echo of his own panicked voice in his ears. _I’m Davenport! I’m Davenport, I’m Davenport..._

Merle places a hand on his shoulder, and the contact is enough to send it spiraling free.

“I’m sorry,” Davenport says again, when Merle pulls him into a hug. He remembers when this used to be all he needed to feel better, when this could be enough. But he hugs Merle tightly and something falls loose in his chest, this stabbing reminder that things should be better now but they just aren’t.

“It’s alright,” Merle says, “I know you need to take this time.”

“I should be ready for this. Better to you,” Davenport says, “better for you.”

Merle brushes a hand against his cheek. “I’m not asking you to be,” he says, “I just want you to be happy. In whatever form that is. I just miss you when you’re not here.”

Davenport gives a short, hiccuping laugh. “I said that, back when-- you don’t get to quote me.”

Merle smiles, gently, “It all comes full circle. This isn’t something we haven’t gone through before.”

“I know,” Davenport says, “I know. It just feels different this time.”

“We can get through it again.”

“I didn’t even get through it the last time,” Davenport says, hollowly, “my memories, my life-- everything was taken away from me.”

“It was handed back to you. And this was handed back as well, in a different form this time.”

He pulls away. “So that’s just life, then? Redoing the same conflicts over and over and never getting any relief?”

“Sometimes it takes a few times for the lesson to sink.”

“So what’s the lesson here, Merle?” He looks at him, his eyes searching and desperate, and he wishes there could be some answer that Merle could give that would make any of this make sense. That there was something he wasn’t getting, something just out of his reach, and it could truly be easy enough that all he needs is Merle to hand it back to him. He’s asking him to hand it to him.

Merle sighs, “I’m not sure,” he admits, “you’re hurting right now and a lot of us are. And you’re allowed to feel that way.”

“I know that,” Davenport snaps, “I don’t need you to tell me that.”

A bird cries overhead, sharp and indignant. Davenport turns away.

“It would be good for you if I was feeling better, wouldn’t it?” he says, watching the way the deck moves beneath his feet. “it would be really convenient if that’s all it took.”

“I’m not waiting for you to feel better, Dav,” Merle says, “I don’t need you to hide this from me.”

“It’s been over a decade since we’ve known each other, Merle,” Davenport spits, “you think all of that goes away? That it doesn’t mean anything?”

“It means a lot,” Merle says, “But it’s not enough to make you not a part of my life anymore.”

“Except for all those years where I wasn’t a part of your life.”

“That wasn’t by choice, and you know that,” finally, a layer of emotion enters Merle’s voice. “And now I’m asking you to be a part of what we didn’t get to share.”

“What if I don’t want that?” Davenport shakes his head. “You know- I dont-- I didn’t get to have a life during those eleven years. And I didn’t have a life then, and I don’t have one now. All those years and I, I haven’t lived any of it.”

“How do you not have a life now?” Merle gestures to the boat, “Is all of this nothing? All the weeks you’ve spent out here not answering my calls?”

“Yes!” He turns to Merle, sharply, “Yes, all of this right now is nothing, because everything I’ve ever done turned out to be nothing, and this is what I have to show for it! A stupid boat and people I don’t even know anymore and a face I don’t even recognize! This is all I get. This is it.”

He kicks the pile of ropes. “This is it. A shitty consolation prize. I gave my life for the mission and it didn’t even need me in the end.”

“Well, I’m sorry, Captain. I’m sorry you didn’t get the _really cool_ awesome adventure that makes all of this worth it. I’m sorry you missed out on me being a shitty dad, on Magnus and Taako having the most traumatic experiences of their lives. And guess what? Nothing about beating the Hunger made any of that worth it for them, either.”

He lets out a shaky breath.

“And that’s what they don’t tell you,” Merle says, “that you have to live after the adventure is over, that the mistakes you made are still there waiting for you even after you do one good thing.”

“I- I know that,” Davenport says, “but I didn’t get to do that one good thing. This was my life’s mission, and I was missing when it mattered most. When it was happening all around me and I was conscious, but not really. Do you know what that’s like? To live your life like that? To only be able to say one fucking word for all those years, and never being treated like you could be more than that?”

Merle opens his mouth, but Davenport cuts him off.

“And don’t I get to be angry about that? Don’t I get some time to say, hey, that’s not fair! It’s not fair that I spent my whole life living for the mission, doing the best I could for the crew, trying to keep us all together with the best plan we had just to have it all ripped away from me. That they took this from me and I didn’t get a choice, or a voice that could say any of this, or anyone who even knew who I was?”

He feels his heart beating hard in his chest, but he ignores it. “And I didn’t even get to know who I was! I had a family and a planet that I lost to the Hunger and I wasn’t even allowed to have that. And then it’s all shoved back into me, and what? I’m supposed to be happy with this? I’m supposed to be fine? Grateful?”

The silence after his words rings louder than anything he could have said. He’s breathing heavily, and he can’t make himself stop.

“You think I like this, Merle? Being out here by myself?” He asks, his voice sharp and dragging. “What the hell do you think I'm even doing out here? Becoming one with nature? Finding myself?”

“I don’t know, Davenport.”

“I don’t know either!” He gestures, sharply, uselessly, “All these days spent out here trying to figure it out and I’m just angry about the time I’m wasting. I want to be back home with you, but I can’t. It’s not that easy.”

“It could be,” Merle interrupts. “I’m not asking for the perfect version of you. I didn’t ask for Davenport who doesn’t have any baggage. I just asked for you, in whatever shape that is.”

“I-I’m not ready,” Davenport says, “That’s why I came out here in the first place.”

“Well, why did you come out here?” Merle asks, his voice echoing on the open water. “There’s nothing here. Didn’t you learn from all this that the bonds we have are what get us through?”

“I--” he falters. “I learned that I wasn’t needed like I thought I was. That I wasn’t enough to keep the crew together. I failed them as a captain.”

“No one cares about that--”

“I do. I care. It’s important to me.”

For a long time, all they can do is listen to the waves hit the boat, stranded out here on the open waters. This is what he chose for himself, a lifeboat to hold all of his anger, and it isn’t polite or easy or anything he wanted Merle to see, but that doesn’t really make a difference when he looks into Merle’s remaining eye and sees a old grief that’s been with him since the first Parley.

“Well, I--” Merle pauses. “I’m sorry you feel that way. I never thought of you like that. You think any of us would be the same without you? You think you need to do something big for your life to be worth it?”

He opens his mouth. “Yeah,” he says, “Yeah, I do.”

For once in his life, Merle isn’t the calm, all knowing presence he’s known him to be. He seems unsettled, more exhausted and jaded than he used to be.

“Then you’ll spend the rest of your life chasing that, and you’ll never be able to find it,” Merle says, “Not on this boat or anywhere else. And there won’t be anything I can do to help you. But never because I don’t want to help you.”

Davenport presses his lips together and shakes his head. They both stare in different directions and watch as the fog dispenses among the rolling waves, as the morning sun shines down but can’t seem to reach them.

“Well,” Davenport says, curtly, “I’m sorry. I wish I could say that I was feeling differently. I wish I could just turn all of this off and say that I’m fine.”

“No one is asking you to do that,” Merle seems tired. “I just didn’t think I’d go through all this to never see you again. To not be a part of your life.”

He stares at Merle. There seems to be nothing he can say that would make any of this better and still be the truth. Because the truth is that he’s still finding a way to identify what’s been growing inside him since before he even knew about it, before he had the words to speak it.

And Davenport can’t find the words for this monster and he can’t find a way to make Merle see it or understand any of it and he can’t say the things Merle wants him to say, the things that would make this all better.

And so he stands there with these thoughts thrashing around inside his head, violent and nonsensical and pure emotion. He stands there on the still water with this storm inside him, something only he can see, only he can weather. And there isn’t a way to make Merle understand it when Davenport can barely keep his head above water himself, much less steer himself towards land. There just isn’t a way.

Finally, Merle walks back into the cabin, and Davenport takes the time to uproot the anchor and move to different waters. He’s getting the hang of his maps now, he never strays too far from the familiar.

And so he docks in a space he knows well enough, and he takes out his fishing rod and casts it into the sea, and he sits in the silence for as long as he needs to and refuses to feel bad about anything.

* * *

  
He stays like that for so long that he wonders if Merle finally called Lup to pick him up and then left without saying goodbye. It wouldn’t be like him, but then again, so much has changed that he isn’t sure he even knows Merle anymore. He sure as hell doesn’t know himself. But he always used to know Merle. There was always that.

But now he’s not so sure.

And so in this new confused world, he doesn’t have anything. He doesn’t have himself, or the people he used to know. He doesn’t have the conversations he used to know by heart, he doesn’t have a life that matches up with theirs. He has a fishing rod, a boat, and the sea, and a memory that doesn’t mean a thing.

Something tugs at his line. He reels it in, watching as the fish flops and thrashes on his deck. It’s gray scales shimmer in the sunlight, and he should kill it and save it for later meals. But instead he slips the hook from it’s mouth and looks into its eyes. It doesn't know a thing about the circumstances it’s found itself in. But it’s fighting to survive, fighting much harder than he ever did.

So he bends down, and with much more gentleness than the fish deserves, he lets it slide out of his hands and into the water, and he murmurs “there you go, little buddy.”

The fish darts off into the darkness, and it won’t know a thing about this mercy. So he sits back and casts his rod in one more time, holding it carefully, letting it ground him.

He almost doesn’t notice Merle at his side until the dwarf sneezes, startling them both.

“Oops,” Merle says, “Sorry about that. I just didn’t want to disturb you too much.”

“Well, that’s over now,” Davenport says, resigned to the impending conversation and sitting back. The rod rests against him, ready for him to grab is he needs to. He looks over to find Merle pressing a second mug of tea into his hands and so he obliges.

The steam feels good on his cold face. The warmth seeps into his sensitive palms. The blisters on them are never able to heal with how much he uses his hands, and he’s grown quite accustomed to it. He thinks he would miss it if they were gone.

As if on cue, he can feel Merle’s gaze. “You sure there’s nothing I can do for that?”

“Yeah,” Davenport says, “I’d rather you didn’t.”

“It can’t be easy, not being able to use your hands.”

“I manage.”

“Well,” Merle says, “you don’t have to.”

“I do, actually,” he says, stronger this time. “It’s something I did to myself and these are the consequences of that.”

“The consequence of you not letting yourself heal, I can see that,” Merle says, pointedly.

“You think I don’t want this to heal?”

“Well, you keep using it, and you won’t let me help you.”

“I don’t have a choice about not using my hands,” he says, “Or maybe I just don’t need your help. Maybe I didn’t ask for it.”

Merle laughs, sharp and dry, “It’s not going to be that easy, Davenport,” he says, “I’m here for you whether you like it or not.”

“I know,” he says, through gritted teeth, “I know. But I’m not-- Good or easy to be around right now.”

“I see that,” Merle says, “But you can’t shake me that easily. I’m here for every version of you.”

“Maybe there are things I don’t want you to see,” Davenport says. “I’m allowed some sort of privacy, aren’t I?”

“Sure,” Merle says, “But you’re never going to lose me. I’m going to hang around whether you like it or not. It’ll be super annoying.”

“Great,” he says, dryly, not quite looking at him. The humor falls flat and he lets it, enjoying the forced silence that follows. He takes a moment to be glad that Merle doesn’t cast Zone of Truth, that he trusts him at least that much to come to him on his own.

Something tugs at the line. He glances over, but doesn’t rise to reel it in. “I spend more than enough time arguing with myself, Merle.” he says, watches as the line tenses. “I don’t want to argue with you as well.”

“Sometimes we have to have hard conversations.”

“Every conversation I have is hard, these days.” Whatever is on the line pulls harder. “It takes more effort than I have to give.”

“That can’t be easy to deal with.”

Davenport sets his tea down to reel in his catch, but by the time he manages it, whatever it was had stolen his bait and managed to get away. He dutifully hooks more bait on, but he doesn’t particularly feel like fishing anymore.

They watch the line bob in the water, dipping and rising with the waves. They breath in and out with the ocean, watching as the clouds cast large shadows on its surface.

“I don’t know what I need right now,” Davenport finally says, “I don’t know what I’m waiting for to happen or what I need to tell you to make you feel better that wouldn’t be a lie. But I like the silence here and I like the routine and maybe I deserve a break to sort all of this out myself the way I want to.”

“I know,” Merle says. “It’s just different, I guess. Back on the Starblaster we went through the cycles together. But what happened to you after Lucretia’s decision is entirely your own. It’s something I can’t relate to, even if I wanted to.”

“I wish you could,” Davenport admits, “I wish I could share this with you, some of what it was like-- but it just seems so impossible.”

“I know.” Merle sighs, “I know. If it were me, I’d want to be with you through it. But this isn’t me. And I can’t tell you what the right thing for you to do is. So you do what you think is right, Captain Davenport, and I’m with you every step of the way, even if I can’t understand everything that you went through.”

“Thank you,” he say, quietly. He picks up his tea, which has cooled in his absence, but he finds he doesn’t mind it much.

* * *

  
Around noon, Lup tears a hole in spacetime and steps through.  
  
“By order of the Raven Queen, I’m here to collect a stowaway,” she announces, coming to join Davenport at the helm where he’s checking his compasses.

“He’ll be out in a minute,” Davenport tells her, glancing over as she nears. “You just get back from a job?”

“You bet,” she says, rubbing some soot from her cheek. “Fun one today. Though I got a little carried away with all the fire. But don’t tell the boys I said that.”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” he says, moving to roll up his maps.

Lup is quiet for a moment, and when he turns, she has her face turned towards the sun, her eyes closed in the warmth. He takes a moment to see how her tan skin glows in the light, how her hair falls freely down her back.

“Almost forgot what that felt like,” she says, “But it’s a good feeling. It’s good to be here.”

He smiles. “It is,” he says, “and it’s good to see you in such high spirits.”

“Yeah, well,” she says, “everything’s coming up Lup for once. Cool new job, cool new place, cool new boss to make fun of.”

“Just as long as you don’t forget to make fun of your old boss every once and a while,” he says, moving to the deck where Merle had just emerged.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she says, and then turns to Merle, “Ready to go?”

“Ugh, yeah,” Merle says, “I like it when the floor doesn’t move all day long. That’s a real bonus of being on land.”

Davenport forces himself to grin, the ghost of their argument still in his head. “You’ll miss it when it’s gone,” he says, “stillness feels boring in comparison.”

“Well, call me boring then, I don’t care.” Merle shakes his head, “Just as long as you call me.”

“Sure.”

Lup opens another portal, but before either of them can leave, Davenport latches onto Merle, holding him back.  
  
At Merle’s questioning gaze, he presents his hands, watching as Merle’s gaze softens in response.

“Finally, you stubborn bastard,” he says muttering a quick healing spell and watching as the broken skin finally closes. “Out here living like magic doesn’t exist.”

“Yeah, well,” Davenport says, “I need something to keep you feeling useful around here. Can’t have you getting bored or anything.”

“Yeah, Pan forbid,” Merle says, “can’t have a moment's rest between you and the rest of those knuckleheads getting busted up all the time.”

“Well, get back to them, then. You know where I’ll be.”

“Yeah,” Merle says, gently, still cradling Davenport’s hands in his. “out here on the ocean doing Pan knows what.”

Davenport laughs, “Let me have it, then.”

A silence falls between them, and for a moment it’s just enough to look into his eye and know that they’re okay. That they’ve gone through too much for this to get between them, for it to be too much for them to get through to the other end.

“Alright,” Merle says, softly, after a long moment. “Whatever you need. For as long as you need.”

Davenport smiles, and it’s almost enough to overwhelm him. “Thank you,” he says, “for understanding. For asking the hard questions. For being there with me through it all.”

“Well,” Merle says, “I do it all for you. You know that.”

“I do,” Davenport says, “I do.”

And with that last gentle moment, he steps through the portal and is gone.

 

* * *

  
_Cycles are harder with Merle in Parlay. Everything is harder without him. The crew’s morale suffers, and wounds become deadlier, and the ever present threat of the Hunger just becomes more and more suffocating with every failed attempt._

_The crew is arguing about something. It’s a fight that doesn’t have to be one. The twins are split on it, which just makes every situation more volatile (Literally. Lup has set the couch on fire more than once to make a point.)_

_He had died early in the last cycle and so didn’t get to see the beginning of whatever has caused this explosion, and no one will explain it to him. It’s probably something along the lines of Barry wanting to do something risky for Science, Magnus wanting to take big hits when he doesn’t have to, Taako swapping his worry for coldness, and Lup reacting to it all. Lucretia is probably somewhere in the mix, but she also died with him last cycle (failed attempt to get the light, they both ended up getting poisoned at a dinner party.)_

_Anyway, this fight can be swapped out for a number of variables, they’ve had it so many times. But usually it doesn’t get this far. Usually, Merle knows what to say to make them say what they’re really thinking. Sometimes they know to skip the fight and just talk. But this time Merle isn’t here and the entire crew clamps their mouth shut when Davenport enters the room._

_An hour ago Davenport had snapped at them to either work it out themselves or let him help them figure it out, but all that had done was send everyone to their rooms to brood and stew about it. He doesn’t even understand most of it and he can’t talk to them the way he needs to. He just wants to order them to get over it, but if he ever said that aloud Merle would never let him forget it._

_He sits down next to Merle’s outline on the deck, glancing longingly at the translucent collection of particles and stardust that make up his form. It would be so easy to have a greater cosmic duty to the universe, and not have to deal with any of this._

_He sighs._

_What would Merle Highchurch do? (WWMHD™)_

_He would take one of them aside. He would know just who to pick. Something quiet and mundane with Taako for him to choose to talk if he wanted to. Maybe Taako would start out ignoring him, but he would come around in his own way. And Merle would always know how to say and not say what he meant and Taako would know how to read between the lines and he would say something about how he doesn’t understand in a way that means he does, and then he would kick Merle out of the kitchen for being a tripping hazard._

_And he would take Magnus out to chop firewood, and they would get into some shenanigans and dare each other to eat weird bugs and try to convince the locals they were royalty, and when that wouldn’t work Magnus would have have that heart to heart he always wants to have, and Merle would say something stupid to make him laugh and Magnus would laugh and everything would be okay._

_And he would try just the right combination to solve whatever crisis they were facing, and he would do it with the right amount of wisdom and emotion and just a touch of being a dumbass that made him so awful and lovable in the first place._

_But Merle isn’t here and Davenport has no idea what to do or how to say the right things. He wishes he could just order them to talk to each other or just say something grand and noble to remind them that each other is all they have, or…_

_“What are you doing right now?” Davenport asks Merle’s ghost, “What are you saying to him?”_

_The figure doesn’t even sway. It is unmoving, unblinking, without even a breath. It’s just a shadow of someone who is needed everywhere he goes._

_He imagines it must be something important. Something so uniquely Merle Highchurch that the Hunger will have no choice but to turn around and leave them alone. Something simple and infuriating that will drive Davenport up the wall for years afterwards, like, who knew we spent so long fighting and trying to escape when the real hunger was the friends we made along the way?_

_Or maybe they’re just playing chess in silence. It could be that._

_“I bet you wish you were here dealing with this instead. This is probably easy compared to whatever you’re up to right now, up against the personification of dread and negativity. This is probably child’s play.”_

_He sighs._

_“I’ll figure something out,” he says to Merle’s unseeing form. “I’ll find a way. Then I’ll have a really funny story to tell you when you’re back next cycle and ready to go off again. I’ll say, hey, our work children were bickering again and I think it’s really because they miss you but I can’t help them with that because I miss you, too.”_

_Ugh. He glances around, but the crew is still in their self imposed exile._

_“I mean, a ship full of Merle Highchurches, right?” He lets out a humorless laugh, “But I wouldn’t mind an extra Merle right now. Just to tell me what to do, or to at least stop worrying so much.”_

_He looks out into the planet. This cycle has dunes of sand that stretch long and far away, with pockets of civilizations here and there. The night has cast a silvery hue on the sand, and he can see a speckled trail of footprints from the crew’s coming and goings._

_A few footprints, and then a year, and they’ll be gone. The Hunger will come and the wind will blow sand over the places they used to be and the planet will forget, if it ever really knew at all._

_“I’m just trying to keep us together,” he says into the dark._

_The desert is calm and still. It has nothing to say to him. The ghost of Merle Highchurch doesn’t say a word. No one is listening. Above him, the stars are small and crowded in the sky, and the one he needs to see is worlds and worlds beyond his reach._

* * *

  
_Three days later, he dies of a knife wound that would have been fine if they had a healer with them, but they don’t, so he bleeds out onto the sand and his crew apologizes and he looks at them and makes them promise to stay together for as long as they can._

* * *

_  
_ It’s weird to miss a time that used to be so stressful and intense for them. It’s weird to miss those high stakes, those long nights, that fear of the unknown. In every sense of the word, things are better now. Things should be better now.

The danger is over and no one is dying anymore. That fear and stress and prolonged grief doesn’t have a hold of them anymore. They have things here on this plane that they get to keep. They have a home here. They’ve earned it.

But he misses the adventure. The lack of permanence of it all. Try again next cycle. Try again next cycle. It had been insufferable at the time, but now he misses it.  It was good to have a purpose. To not have a choice.

So many things in his life he didn’t have a choice over. He was the captain, and yet his life had unfolded and he wasn’t in charge of it at all. People made choices without him. People were affected without him. And now, with his memory handed back, he had chosen to abandon it all to bob around on the waves and let the ocean hear his secrets.

“Of course I don’t like it,” he tells the ocean, “But what am I supposed to do? Go home and let Merle babysit me all day because I don’t want to get a part time job? Sit around here and talk to myself until I figure it out?”

This is good. This is a constant. The waves are always pushing, and the tides are always pulling in timed intervals. The water raises and the moon shines down and he always knows where the brightest star is located.

“I mean, I should go home,” he admits, “I should go and let everyone see how well adjusted I am. It’s been enough time. And I...I really, really want to.”

He takes a deep breath.

He can feel the pressure all around him. Who he used to be. What would that past version of him say now, to the captain-not-captain?

 _Get it together,_ Captain Davenport would say, _You have to be stronger than this. Your crew needs you._

But he doesn’t have a crew anymore.

_They still need you._

They’re not children. They have their own lives.

_Do you really trust them not to put aluminum in the microwave? Remember when they deep fried a shoe?_

To be fair, leather is edible.

_Doesn’t matter. You were their captain and they need you now. Would you let any one of them go out on their own for this long? What if Barry was out here talking to himself and getting sunburn?_

Barry would put on sunscreen. He isn’t that careless.

_You asshole. Get it together. This isn’t who you are._

Yes, well, he used to also be a butler who only said his name for years and years and then couldn’t hold a cohesive thought in his brain and was the butt of the joke to everyone around him.

_That’s not you either. Come on._

Well. He can’t repeat the past. Every past version of him is dead and gone. Even who he is now will someday be a memory. Hey, remember that time he had a pseudo identity crisis and then went all Cast Away on the ocean? (Which was a very good movie. Fantasy Tom Hanks. A volleyball. Good stuff.)

Funnily enough, he can’t find a response that his Captain self would have had for that. Or maybe he’s finally gone crazy enough that there isn’t even a difference anymore. Who cares, right?

He’s tired and sad.

* * *

  
Life on the boat is so, so boring. But he loves the mundane repetition of it, and he thinks that maybe he’ll spend his whole life like this, tying knots in the dock lines and charting courses and stopping for supplies and casting his line into the sea. Maybe he’ll look up from a rather complicated hitch knot to find the world ended around him once more, except this time the universe didn’t chose him to fight it. He was just a bystander, out on the ocean as life happens around him.

It would be good if it happened that way or even the other way around. If his days out here were truly timeless, then he could walk back onto land to find that not even a minute had passed since he had left, and Merle would open the door and say, “Back so soon? I hardly noticed you were gone.”

And Davenport could pretend that these weeks and weeks had never happened, that he had known what he was looking for and found it almost immediately, that the ocean had everything he knew it would, and just breathing in the positive ions in the salt air had been enough to shake him from this fog he’s in.

And he could spend years and years out here with hardly a moment passing in the real world. And the world would wait for him to be ready and he would be in no time at all. And he wouldn’t have to get updates from the crew about whatever business they’re starting or how successful they’re all becoming. Everything would wait until he was ready. And he would be ready, for whenever that moment was.

He would be ready, and he would want it. He would go back to Merle and know just what to say to reassure him that the time he spent out here wasn’t wasted. That he didn’t just fling himself out into the middle of the ocean just to realize that he left everything he needed back on land. He didn’t just waste all this time moping around when he could have been actually a part of life back home.

“I didn’t learn a thing,” he tells the ocean. “I’m doing all this for nothing. Running from this doesn’t make it easier. The only way to rebuild is to go back and do it.”

The waves crash against his boat in agreement.

But he doesn’t go back. Not this day or the next.

* * *

  
Taako is standing on the deck, looking bored.

“Hey,” he says, when Davenport emerges, “what’s up?”

“Uh,” Davenport rubs his eyes. “Not much.” He clears his throat. “What are you doing here? Um, how did you get here?”

As if on cue, Kravitz coughs politely from the other end of the deck. Oh. Portals.

“Anyway,” Taako says, adjusting his wide brimmed hat. “I made a bunch of croissants that will change your life. Haven’t done that in a while. Know what else I haven’t done in a while? Seen your face. So clear your schedule, it’s Taako Time™.”

“How do you do that with your mouth?” Kravitz looks mystified.

“Don’t worry about it, sugar.” Taako hands Davenport a container of croissants. It takes his entire concentration to not stumble at the surprising weight.

“Some of them have sesame seeds,” Taako says, inviting himself into the cabin, “I don’t know if you like that or not, but that’s what you get for never answering your stone.”

Davenport follows Taako into the cabin and places the croissants down. Across the room, Taako makes a disgusted noise in the back of his throat.

“Oh, hon,” he says, “It’s worse than I imagined.”

He starts shifting through the crates. “Captain, there’s no need to torture yourself like this. You’ve got connections with the best chef in the world and you’re out here eating, what, beef jerky? Saltine crackers? Like, are you trying to insult me?”

“What’s wrong with that?” He talks through the mound of croissants. “They store easily. Lasts forever.”

“It’s dead people food,” Taako says, clasping a hand across his chest. “And you’re not dead yet. Besides, this is just sad.”

“I happen to like beef jerky,” he argues, “and Saltine crackers.”

“For every meal?” Taako shakes his head. “I’m personally offended that you didn’t call me sooner.”

“Yeah, uh…” He thinks back to his Stone of Farspeech, forgotten by his bedside.

Taako sighs forlornly. “I don’t know why I even bother.”

Taako breezes out of the cabin and back onto the deck, where Kravitz is waiting patiently.

“Looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me, babe,” he says, giving Kravitz a chaste kiss.“I’ll call you later so you can come pick me up, okay?”

“Alright, love,” Kravitz says, the scythe materializing in his hands “Take as much time as you need.” He opens a portal with one fell swoop before turning to nod at Davenport. Then he steps into the portal, leaving Taako and Davenport behind.

Taako sighs, “Hate to see him leave but love to watch him go, you know?”

Davenport nods, not really listening in favor of retrieving his anchor.

“I gotta say,” Taako continues, “loving this portal business. How else do people get around? Walking? I’m never walking anywhere ever again.”

Davenport pulls the anchor aboard and then climbs towards the controls.

“And even this boat, so old fashioned. Real downgrade from the Starblaster huh? I bet this thing can’t even fly.”

He guns the motor, and grins at the way Taako squawks and briefly loses his balance.

* * *

  
“Word on the street is that you know all the best fishing spots,” he says, “that’s what Taako’s all about. Get me some Me Time.”

Davenport baits his hook instead of answering, trying not to slice his thumb like last time.

“And that pendant Lup gave you means we can pop in at any moment. It’s Ten o’clock, do you know where your captain is?”

He casts his line.

“And if you’d answer your Stone of Farspeech I wouldn’t have to surprise you like this,” Taako says, “But you leave me no choice.”

“What a shame,” Davenport says, “And here I’d thought I’d have to go fishing on my own, with no one to tell me how portals work.”

“Well, you better catch something and make this worth it,” Taako says, “Ya boy Taako’s going to Ango’s PTA meeting tomorrow and you _know_ I’m gonna bring a five course meal to upstage all those bitches. Oh, Karen, nice try with your store bought muffins. This is why your daughter forgot her lines in the school play.”

He feels a light tugging at his line, but it goes away before he can react.

Taako flings his line into the ocean. “We draw straws when the kiddo has school functions,” he explains, “Magnus got to chaperone the last school dance so now he’s dead to me.”

“Real cutthroat, huh?”

Suddenly, Taako reels his line in and flips a rather large fish onto the deck. He kills it quickly and then nearly falls off the boat in the middle of his celebration.

“Hell yeah my man,” he says, sitting down heavily “that’s what I’m talking about.”

Davenport’s line comes back tangled in seaweed. He sighs and gets to work with untangling it.

* * *

 

  
A few hours later, he and Taako have managed to gather about half the ocean’s worth of fish, and Taako couldn’t be happier.

“You know,” Taako says, “it’s not so bad out here. Nice and quiet. I don’t know why I’d thought you’d lost your marbles.”

He frowns. “What?”

“Yeah, I mean,” Taako sits back, “not that I don’t get it. A guy’s gotta take some time for himself and all. But there really isn’t much to do out here, is there?”

He shrugs. “It’s enough. I find things to do.”

Taako is quiet for a moment. He plays with his Stone of Farspeech in his hand, but doesn’t make a call. He just looks out into the water, at the sun recently departed and the darkness left in its wake.

“Some days are a lot easier than others,” Taako says.

“Yeah,” Davenport says, staring out into sea. “I know what you mean.”

“It’s like I have two sets of memories,” Taako says, “And who I was when I couldn’t remember her, that was me. That was who Kravitz fell in love with. But now he knows all this and only loves me more.” He shakes his head. “It’s weird.”

“It is.” He thinks of Merle.

“I don’t know,” Taako says, “Sometimes it’s so simple and then other days I can’t even think about it. I didn’t think I could survive without Lup. But I did, without even knowing it. I found her in that cave and she was dust to me.”

The silence from across the sea presses down on them. Miles from any sort of human contact and it is only the two of them in the silence, in the dark.

“I guess that means I can do more than I think I’m capable of,” Taako says, a hand drifting up to mindlessly touch tuck a lock of hair behind his ear. “But sometimes I think I’d rather live my life not knowing than have to deal with the answers I have now. Is that wrong? I think it is.”

“I don’t know,” Davenport says, “If I knew, then I guess I wouldn’t be out here. I could just flip the switch and it would all be fine.”

Taako laughs, “Yeah.”

Davenport nods. He can’t find it in himself to say anything. They stand there in silence for longer than they should, longer than Davenport should let it. But they stand there as the dusk settles  around them, as the water turns an inky black. The waves quiet into a soft roll, and for a moment the heartbeat of the ocean in the only sound between them.

Finally, Taako stops fiddling with the Stone of Farspeech. “Hey Krav,” he sighs, when his boyfriend picks up. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“Well, Captain my Captain,” Taako turns to him, “I should go put these in the refrigerator before the cats can get too crazy over it. But at least I can go tell Karen where she can stick her muffins tomorrow.”

“Happy to be of help,” Davenport says, tiredly.

“Yeah,” Taako says, “Make sure you take a look at those croissants, too. If they go stale I _will_ end you.”

“I promise,” he says, as a portal tears through the open space. “Thanks for keeping me company.”

“You’re welcome, my dude,” Taako says, “It’s not so bad out here. Next time I’m gonna charge you for it, though. This one’s a freebie.”

“I’ll consider myself lucky.”

“As you should.”

* * *

  
The croissants have a message from Magnus scrawled on a scrap of paper giving him directions to the Hammer and Tails, telling him that the dogs would love to meet him.

 _It’s like I have a crew of my own,_ Magnus writes, _an excited, energetic, barking crew._ _How did you do it? All of them still try to sleep on the bed with me and yell for no reason. It’s just starting out, but Hammer and Tails is open for business if you’re up for a lot of licking. Not from me, of course._

He thinks of Magnus, in the ruins of his old life and trying to rebuild. Living with his ghosts for as much as he can. Honoring them the best he can and the world that had placed him there. With great sorrow comes a chance to do better the next time around.

 _Well, Magnus,_ he writes, _The key to a barking crew is to listen to them. All barks are different. Usually the source is not what you think it is. It’s a lot of trial and error, but you get the hang of it if you know how to listen. Sometimes they howl all night and cry for no reason. Sometimes they eat your shoes. And sometimes all they want to do is go for walks and play fetch. But a crew is the best friend you’ll ever have and I’m glad you get to have this experience._

_Sounds like you have your hands full. Keep me updated._

He chews on a croissant. It doesn’t change his life, but he enjoys it anyway.

* * *

  
“I’m tired,” he says, when Merle picks up. “I’m tired, and I’m not ready. Do you think I’ll ever be?”

“That’s a pretty broad question,” Merle muses, “I’d say if you’re talking about your Fantasy Broadway career, well, not quite yet.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m not sure I do,” Merle says, “Though if you’ve been practicing your audition, I’d love to hear it.”

“Be serious.”

“I am,” Merle says, indignantly, “But maybe you’re right. You were always meant for more of a stage manager position.”

“Merle.”

“Hey,” he laughs, “You’re not giving me a lot to work with.”

“I mean, like, life and stuff.” He flounders. “Having a job and a family and not spending all day thinking about the past.”

Merle is quiet for a moment. “I can’t tell you when you’re ready,” he says, “but if you want to, you can always do a trial run here in Bottlenose Cove. There’s a new bar in town that seems pretty cool, if you want to check it out.”

“Maybe,” Davenport says. _I’m afraid we’ll argue again._ _That I’ll mess everything up._

“Well, life’s pretty quiet here with the kids off with their mother for a bit,” Merle says, “I’m due for something new, so the invitation is always there.”

He opens his mouth. He doesn’t know how to explain that it’s not that easy. That some days he feels fine and then other days he thinks he hasn’t learned a thing. Some days he’s at peace with the past and then other days he’s horrifically embarrassed and ashamed of his own name. How it feels to see that everyone else seems to do it so easily and he’s stuck here in the past on a boat going nowhere. He doesn’t know how to say that he’s still carrying things around from events that happened a lifetime ago and he doesn’t know how to explain that even when he’s here he’s not really present. He’s not really anywhere.

“You make it sound so easily,” he says, weakly.

“It could be, if you let it,” Merle says, softly, “That’s what I found. Usually things want to be easy, and we’re the ones who make it needlessly hard.”

Something in his voice makes Davenport’s chest ache with longing and homesickness.

“It won’t be forever,” he warns.

“Davenport, right now I’m on the beach with sand up in every inch of me. Nothing is forever. Not sand up your ass or anything else.”

He laughs, “for your sake, I hope not.”

“It’s uncomfortable,” Merle comments, “But I’ve got nothing else to do, so I might as well take this moment for what it is.”

Davenport looks out into the ocean. The same ocean that Merle is looking out into, imagining him on. “Take the moment,” he says, “it’s a good one.”

“Hey,” Merle says, “Last week some guy came by here with a crab claw for a hand. Said it was cursed, but he was really good at opening beer bottles so now he’s working over at Chesney’s. Did I tell you about it?”

No, of course he hadn’t. But Davenport settles deeper into his chair and he says, “No, tell me.”

And he does.

* * *

  
_Lucretia stands by his side and they look out into the plains. The cracked earth is dry and heaving under it’s frequent earthquakes, and the constant movement prevents the Starblaster from docking in that cycle. Barry had tried to go down for the Light and now he was confined to Lich form for the rest of the cycle._

_The ground shudders. No trees have managed to grow here. Nothing could remain upright. It’s baked dirt for as far as his eyes can see._

_“What do you think?” he asks her, turning his sight away from the spasming plates._

_“It’s interesting,” she says, “constant movement. Change. It won’t let any of us get close, even if we wanted to.”_

_“Do you think there’s life down there?”_

_She looks wistful. “Maybe,” she says, “I would love to see it. It could be underground?”_

_It would be a testament to tenacity and survival if any living thing could build a society here, beneath the bucking plates, the constant shifting, the violent churns. The planet is also constantly flooding with tsunamis caused by all the earthquakes. It seems that nothing could survive down there under all that turmoil._

_“Maybe it’s better this way,” he says, “nothing to save. Nothing to lose when the Hunger comes.”_

_“I suppose,” she looks up from her journal, “or at least, nothing we can see.”_

_“Not from lack of trying.”_

_She keeps writing. He frowns. “What are you even working on?”_

_She shows him. “I’m trying to describe the earthquakes. Perhaps if there was some sort of noticeable pattern we could go planetside in between.”_

_He leans against the railing. “Better than being on the ship for an entire year.”_

_She grins. “I don’t know, Captain. Magnus and the Twins are already doing shots.”_

_He thinks of the couch. “I’ll go get the fire extinguisher.”_

_“Thank you. And, Davenport?”_

_He turns. She’s at the end of a long silver hall._

_“Please get my mug as well. I’m afraid I left it in the kitchen just now. It’s a purple with yellow flowers. Do you know it?”_

_He nods. He has an image of it in his head. “Davenport,” he says in affirmation, and turns to leave._

_The walk to the Bureau kitchen takes longer than he remembers and more than once he completely forgets where he is. He’s walking and his feet know the way but he thinks, where is he? He’s not supposed to be here. No, No, no, this isn’t the- Davenport. Davenport._

_Davenport. He is- he was- he had-_

_Davenport. That is the answer. That one word is everything he is. He finds the kitchen with a headache rolling in between his temples and a frown on his face and the mug when he finds it is a different shade of purple than how he envisioned it. But of course, this is it. What had he been thinking of?_

_The tea is cold in the mug but he brings it to her anyway, and she looks startled to see him standing there._

_“Davenport? Oh, that’s right. I sent you for my tea. Thank you.” She takes it from him, “it’s been about an hour since I saw you in here, I had honestly forgotten about it. But thank you.”_

_He nods again. An hour? The walk only seemed like a few minutes. The only difference is the pain spiking through his skulls. “Davenport,” he says, weakly._

_She notices. “Is everything okay?”_

_He opens his mouth to say yes. “Davenport.”_

_This is wrong. The way she’s looking at him is wrong somehow._

_Her gaze softens in recognition. “I think you should go lay down,” she says, “I can ask someone else to take over your duties for the day.”_

_He nods again, grateful. He doesn’t know why she’s so kind to him even after he can barely keep his thoughts straight or manage simple tasks, but he’s glad that she gives him those second chances. He wonders if his mother ever worried about him the same way, if he had one, where is she? Where did he come from? How--_

_The migraine doesn’t leave him for the rest of the day, but it does chase everything else out of his brain. The pain throbs in his skull in resounding echoes, and with each pull he feels the force of his own name on his lips._

_He can hardly stand for the rest of the day, and can’t manage bright lights or to even look the director in the eyes, but he doesn’t think he’d like what he’d see there even if he could._

* * *

  
Is it wrong, then, that he wakes up feeling strange? Is it in any way unexpected?

 _I am grateful for the way she took me in, though I know I shouldn’t be,_ he writes, _she took care of me but she was the one who did that to me in the first place. Whatever I had gone through wasn’t bad enough for her to change her plan. What does that say about me?_

 _It’s patronizing._ (Here the page is bled through with ink where he had paused to think of the right word.) _It’s humiliating. How am I supposed to have any sort of dignity left in me when she did not leave me with any? A butler? I was her Captain. (_ Here the rest of the line is angrily scribbled out.)

_Why didn’t she trust me?_

_And now what? I pick up and go on with my life? I learn how to knit and find inner peace and go to book clubs and pretend I’m happy now that I have the ability to finally process what had happened to me?_

_Merle was wrong. This is hard because it was meant to be. I can’t just go home and pretend this isn’t affecting me._

_The worst thing is that I don’t know what I want to happen. I don’t wish anything upon Lucretia except for contentment and success. I hope she finds something from all this that prevents her from making a decision that drastic on her own ever again. I just wish we had been enough to to prevent it the first time._

_But we hadn’t, and I know she didn’t mean me harm. And really, I don’t know what I would have done if I was in her situation. And there’s no telling who’s side I would be on if I was inoculated early after she saw the unintended results of her actions. And at least this way she could keep an eye on me. It’s logical. Maybe that’s the worst part. I can see her logic. What would I have rather she’d done? Thrown me out on the street? Of course not._

_Maybe it’s not just Lucretia. Maybe it’s the others as well. I can’t quite blame Magnus, Merle, and Taako for what they might have done without their memories, but it still doesn’t sit right. Davenport, do a funny dance. Davenport, he only says his name, he doesn’t understand what’s going on, isn’t it funny how he’s not even a person? He doesn’t have a thought in his head. Where’s the director, his chaperone?_

_Just because I was like that doesn’t mean I wasn’t deserving of respect. But the people those three had been without their memories was a crueler, more caustic versions of them. I can’t fault them for that, can I?_

_Lucretia should have said something to them. I don’t know. I know none of them would ever say that to me now. But I don’t even get an apology? We’re all going to act like this never happened?_

He crumples up the paper and throws it into the ocean, and watches how the water destroys the ink.

* * *

  
It turns out that this whole time he had been circling pretty close to Bottlenose Cove, and once he figures that out he calls Merle, who picks up on the first ring.

“Hullo?”

“Hey Merle. I’m pretty close to where you are. Can we talk?”

“Of course. I’ll go wait by the docks. Everything okay?”

“Yeah. Test run, and all that.”

“If you say so. See you in a bit.”

* * *

  
He stumbles on the dock, unsurprisingly. Merle laughs and catches him by the arm, and lets him lean until he gets some semblance of balance back into his legs.

“Weird, isn’t it?” Merle laughs.

The grounds not moving, but it is. Merle lowers him to the ground as he wobbles and he sits there for a few moments before he can speak again.

“Weird,” he says.

Merle looks at him. “You okay?”

“Not really.”

“Oh,” Merle looks at the boat. “Did something happen?”

“No,” he says, “No, I just thought we should talk. I just thought--” He doesn’t know what he had been thinking.

Merle looks sad. Davenport hates that look on his face. Especially when he’s still trying to be mad at him, or at least put into words this tangled up feeling inside him. He doesn’t know what he is right now. He’s all mixed up and sad and angry and ashamed and bitter.

Finally, he stands. “Let’s go for a walk,” he says.

They reach the end of the dock. “The house is down that way,” Merle says, pointing to the left.

Davenport takes the right. Merle follows but doesn’t say anything, and for a while, the maelstrom of emotions is enough to push him forward, stomping down the beach in silence, with his boots in the shore and not caring at how it makes his socks wet.

The tide tries to pull him in, lure him back to the steady calm of the open sea, but he resists. The wind pushes him towards Merle behind him, but he resists. He just walks and walks until he stops, and he still doesn’t know what he’s going to say even when he opens his mouth.

“Do you know how I feel, Merle, when I think about those years I spent at the Bureau?”

Behind him, Merle is silent. Davenport turns to look at him. He looks sad, which annoys him.

He shakes his head. “I don’t even want to tell you. I feel like this experience is only for me, like I have to protect it from you. From the crew.”

“Why’s that?”

The bitterness rises in his throat. “I,” he swallows, “I was-- Back then--” He takes a frustrated breath.

“I was vulnerable then and you didn’t know me and-- I don’t want to be vulnerable again. Like I still have to keep my guard up, like that part of me, that buried Bureau of Balance member inside me telling me about the way no one ever acknowledged me or looked me in the eye. And I know now that I know you guys, that you’re my friends, but the feeling doesn’t go away. And I--”

Davenport feels the water seep into his socks. “On the boat you said that I should know better than to isolate myself, that I should remember the bonds, well, well...”

He lets out a ragged exhale and shakes his head. “I don’t even know what I want to say here,” he says, coldly. “I don’t know what I’m trying to accomplish.”

He keeps walking before Merle has a chance to respond. Dutifully, he hears the dwarf’s footsteps behind him, splashing in the tugging water.

“I mean,” the words are pulled from his throat by an invisible thread. “I didn’t expect us to be best friends, or for you to recognize me then or anything. And you weren’t too awful to me, so I don't even know what I'm mad at you for. You didn't do anything. Anything could have happened to me then. And nothing did, thank god, but, but you, Merle. I love you so much but what happened then wasn’t nothing."

He turns back to Merle, who frowns at the question. He’s silent for a long time, and finally Davenport thinks he might not even answer.

“Bonds didn’t save me then,” Davenport says, “We spent all those cycles creating a bond and then one day it didn’t mean a thing. It was thrown out and you treated me like I was nothing. You three barely acknowledged me. And now that you know me again, I’m suddenly important enough?”

“Davenport--”

“And what if it hadn’t worked?” He hears his voice raising, “What if my brain was just too wrecked by the voidfish, and even after Story and Song all I could say was my name, would you treat me different then? Is that where my value comes from, other people’s perceptions of me? Davenport the mute butler? Who cares! Davenport the captain, well now he has meaning. Thank Pan for that.”

He glares at Merle until the dwarf clears his throat. “Well,” Merle says, “ I can tell you that your value doesn’t come from our perceptions of you. You’re valuable all on your own. And I know you might not believe that, coming from me, and what I had done or didn’t do without my memory says something, but doesn’t our time together before then speak louder?”

He looks down at the sand. “Maybe,” he says, “But it seems weird that no one will even acknowledge it, much less apologize. It’s like they’re ashamed for me.”

“I’m sorry, Davenport,” Merle says, “We didn’t know how to approach it. Maybe we thought we were doing you a favor by not mentioning it, or maybe we just wanted to protect ourselves from a hard conversation, but I’m sorry.”

He looks away.

Merle continues, stronger this time. “Really, I am. What happened to you doesn’t color how I think of you, but you’re right. It is important. I’m sorry we didn’t get to talk about it before now.”

Davenport shakes his head. “I might not have been able to speak, but I still noticed things,” he says, “And now I have this memory of someone I love treating me like I didn’t exist. It’s hard to look at you and see both. It’s like I have two sets of memories, two different images of you.”

“I know,” Merle says, “I feel it, too. And so do Taako and Magnus.”

He’s silent for a while, watching the waves rush over his boots. "I look at myself and see a captain reduced to a butler and it disgusts me that the rest of you had to see me like that."

“At least you three…” he falters. “At least you could have lives, and friends, and… Your bonds brought the three of you back together again. You talk about bonds, but for those years I didn’t have any.”

“Sounds lonely.”

“I…” something constricts in his throat. “I’m jealous of that,” he admits, “And disappointed. I thought I deserved better. From the people around me. From myself. The universe. Like it owed me something in particular. But you’re right. I was lonely, and now everyone’s back, and they all have lives without me, and… I’m still lonely. Even with everyone around me again.”

“No one has a life without anyone,” Merle reminds him, “You’re a part of everything we do.”

“I don’t feel like it. I was gone for all those years and I still don’t feel like I’m back.”

“You are,” Merle says, moving to sit down on the sand. “You’re here.”

Davenport sits down next to him. “It feels like Lucretia and I are the only ones who will talk about it.”

For a long moment they watch the clouds pass in the sky.

“You’re not wrong,” Merle says, with the sky reflected in his glasses, “to expect better. I’m not proud of who I was back then and you’re included in that. It hurts me to think that I hurt you. Now when I think back to it, I know you. How could I not?”

Davenport hugs his knees to his chest.

“How could I not know you,” Merle repeats, “You’re Davenport. You’re the bravest man I know, and I love you for it. You continue to challenge and surprise me. I still regret all that time we spent away from each other before we even reached this plane.”

Davenport sighs. It feels like a conversation they’ve had a million times before, and yet is also a long time coming.

“There’s no getting around it,” Davenport sighs, already defeated, “you had to go to Parlay. We both knew that.”

“I know,” Merle says, “But it was a little weird to see that the crew still functioned when I was gone. You all did plenty of cycles without me. Worlds I never even got to see.”

He thinks of the planet with the churning ground. “You didn’t miss much,” Davenport says, “But I guess that was where the separation started and this only made it worse.”

“I know. But I wish I had been there anyway.”

“I wish you had been there, too,” he says, “But it wouldn’t have made a difference.”

“No,” Merle says, “I think it would have. We didn’t get a choice with me going to Parlay. We didn’t get a choice with what happened with the Voidfish. But we have a choice now. You have a choice.”

"Do I?"

Merle takes Davenport’s hand, and he lets him. He looks down at their interlocked fingers. They still have each other. After everything that had happened, all those years and everything in between, they’re here. He sighs.

“I’m sorry,” Merle says, “I’m sorry for not understanding it before now. I should have paid more attention to how you were feeling.”

“You were busy,” Davenport says, dully, “I can’t blame you for that, Earl Merle.”

Merle grins dryly at the title. “I could have made time,” he says, “I guess it kind of sucks that I kept telling you we had time while also being super busy and important and only coming to see you on my terms.”

He laughs, sharply, “Yeah,” he says, “Kinda.”

“Well,” Merle says, “No more of that. I’m taking a break. A vacation.”

Davenport looks at him. “Don’t do that,” he says. “Let’s start with how you live now. Apparently there’s a really cool bartender you still have to introduce me to.”

Merle brightens. “Yeah?”

Davenport feels himself giving in. Wanting to give in. To let Merle lead him and help him rebuild all the ruins he had found himself in.

“Yeah,” he says, “For a bit. There’s still a lot out on the ocean that I haven’t seen yet. There’s a lot on this planet I haven’t seen. And maybe... I want to see it.”

Merle stands up and dusts the wet sand from his pants. “Well,” he says, “we’re just in time for lunch. What do you say we check out the town?”

And he sighs one more time and says, “Okay.”

So Merle offers his hand, and he takes it.

 

* * *

And the ocean waits for him. It waits for him and it houses all of his sadness and growth and when he returns he feels lighter and clearer than he has in a long time. He returns to it and waves to Merle at the docks and he knows that no goodbye is for forever.

And maybe it won't feel healed right away. Maybe it won't be this month, or the next. But he always has a place to return to. Wherever Merle is, that's where home is. Thre's no point in the universe that could take that away.

And so he finds a way to move forward He visits the Hammer and Tails and talks to Magnus and Taako and he reads the piles of books that Barry lends him and he charts courses to remote islands and old wrecks and starts to explore. He describes everything he sees and it’s not perfect, not always, but it’s a life and it’s his.

And there are still days where he can’t seem to grapple with the way it all turned out, that it just seems too big for him to handle. There are times where the silence of the ocean almost threatens to overtake him. But his crew is always there to remind him and he finds himself wanting to learn about the things that have changed in his absence. And so it’s good to remeet people he already knows and find time for the ones he doesn’t yet

He finds a day to teach Angus some basic illusion magic and Taako begrudgingly adds his name to the drawing to chaperone the kid’s next school event.

And so he reads and he learns and he accepts invitations from the crew and he explores this world he’s found himself in, this world that is his. There’s so much to learn from each new location he finds himself in, cultures and communities that welcome him in, and entire world rebuilding and recovering, and himself along with them.

Little by little, he lets the past go. He lets Captain Davenport of the IPRE go. The journey is over. The Hunger is defeated. The mission is ended as has that part of him, and he doesn't need to fight to keep it. He doesn't need to go back to that stage of his life. As for the butler from the Bureau of Balance, he treats those memories with kindness. He learns how to be patient with himself, how to pick up where he's left off, this time with all parts of him.

And so it is a year of change, and it’s a year of everything he didn’t get to feel finally catching up to him. Confronting all the things he had been carrying for all those years, all those moments that meant nothing until they were all right there in front of him again, and he learns that things that hurt don’t stop hurting once they’re over.

And so he lets himself grieve over the time he’s lost, and he calls Merle and rants until the words don’t find him anymore. And he calls Merle when he’s confused, and he calls Merle when he’s happy, and he calls Merle when he just needs to hear his voice. And in return he gets those calls back, in the time when they’re just trying to fit into each other’s lives again. With it is the unspoken promise to keep trying, that all that had happened has left them changed but not too changed that they can’t find each other again.

And so he enjoys learning about all the little ways Merle is different now, all the lessons he’s picked up and things he’s learned along the way. He enjoys the stories and the challenges, and the idea that the future has room for both of them together.

Because it’s Merle, despite the distance, despite the change. It’s Merle with one eye instead of two, with a new wooden arm and an eye can’t see that well in the dark anymore. It’s Merle with his big heart and his snarky comebacks, his weird anecdotes and clashing fashion. It’s Merle, and he loves him more than anything.

And so he celebrates the changes, even the ones he didn’t get to see. He meets Merle’s children and he enjoys teaching them what he knows and listening to their wild stories. He chases Mookie on the beach and he discusses books with Mavis and catches Merle watching them in those moments when he thinks no one can see.

It’s life. It’s life, and it’s confusing, and he still carries all of his experiences with them, even the ones he still struggles to understand. Everything that had happened to him is a part of him, and the people around him have shown that they see it.

Davenport the IPRE Captain is still within him, once unfulfilled and angry at his loss and failure. Alongside that is Davenport from the Bureau of Balance, afraid and unsure but still carefully trusting of the people around him. And those too versions of himself don’t exist independent of each others. It’s all part of who he is today, sometimes angry, sometimes afraid, but always himself. It’s something that hasn’t changed, despite everything he’s seen and the road he’s traveled.

So he takes those two versions of himself and he learns to live with it all, to let himself feel everything he can and take pride in that too. He finds it in him to forgive himself for all the things he failed to do, for all the moments he can’t take back, and everything else that lead him to where he is today.

And he writes down everything he sees, everything he feels. He writes his first letter to Lucretia but he signs them all with:

_Joyfully yours, Davenport._

* * *

_  
"Good morning Dr. Highchurch. I’m Captain Davenport, and I’ll be conducting your interview today."_

_"Nice to meet you, captain. I’m Merle Highchurch. Well, you knew that."_

_"Yes. It says here on your resume that you’re a physician and a biologist?"_

_"That’s right. I think it would be a great addition to your team."_

_"As you know, it’s only two months, but that can be a long time. Are you equipped for the long journey?"_

_"Yes. The trip here took an entire hour hour."_

_"I suppose a sense of humor is something else you’re bringing to the table?"_

_"Well, they say laughter is the best medicine."_

_"That’s true. What would you say is your greatest weakness?"_

_"I’m deathly allergic to cantaloupe, so that."_

_"...I see. And your greatest strength?"_

_"I think what this trip needs is someone to facilitate communication. I’m rather adept at conflict resolution, not to brag, but I did prevent a soccer mom from speaking to the manager at Fantasy Costco last week."_

_"Well, as the manager of this mission, I would like my employees to speak with me."_

_"That’s important. Talk it out, throw some feelings in the mix. Another good medicine."_

_"I'm hoping you’ll have some actual medicine in your arsenal as well."_

_"Of course. Can’t have anyone catching the Space Flu while we’re out there."_

_"Yes, well, we’ll all be up to date on our space vaccinations. I have some more questions for you, but before we get into that, is there anything you’d like to ask me?"_

_"Hmm. What are your goals as captain?"_

_"Well, Dr. Highchurch--"_

_"Merle."_

_"Merle. This mission is something I’ve been waiting for my whole life. As captain I hope to guide you all towards a better understanding of the universe. I anticipate that we’ll all help each other make discoveries no one could have perceived before today."_

_"Sounds exciting. Sounds like you’ll need a really special crew for that."_

_"That's right. I think the right combination of people can accomplish anything. You could say that this crew is also something I’ve been waiting for my whole life."_

_"I admire your optimism, Captain. I think you’ll find that we’re in agreement there."_

_"Thank you, Merle. Shall we continue?"_

* * *

  
The man in the mirror is older. The months out at sea had changed him, but so had everything that came before it. But it’s not an unwelcome change.

And the hair at his temples is a little gray, and his face is more tan and has more wrinkles, and the ocean had made him a little more weathered, a little more tough. But it’s him. Every part of him is glad to be where he is, proud of the progress he had made.

He smiles and smooths down his tuxedo the best he can as hears a door open behind him.

“Hey,” Davenport says, “You look fancy.”

“I’ve got to,” Merle says. “I’m officiating. I’m the real star of the show.”

He laughs, “I’m sure,” he says.

Merle takes his hand. “Look at us,” he says “a couple of old men.”

“I’m not old yet,” Davenport huffs, “speak for yourself.”

Merle smiles. Davenport finds himself smiling back. They always find a way to get back on their feet. They find new conversations to have, new jokes and references and new things to see. And it’s exciting, and it’s familiar, and it’s Merle.

“Well, we’ve got a wedding to get to,” Davenport says, but he doesn’t move from the mirror.

Merle moves to take his other hand, forcing them to face each other. Davenport squeezes his hand when Merle lets the silence ring out.

“You think that’ll be us someday?” Merle finally says, looking down at their joined hands.

“Married? We practically already are,” he says, “unless you wanted to make it official?”

Merle laughs, “I just want to throw a party. Everyone we know can be invited.”

He thinks about it. “And if we just happen to give really long toasts about how much we love each other, well, that makes it a wedding by coincidence.”

“Yes,” Merle single eye glows in delight, “We’ll surprise them. Invite everyone over for a dinner party and then bam! It’s a wedding.”

Merle’s giddiness is infectious. “The twins will never forgive us,” Davenport whispers. It feels like a secret. Just the two of them.

“That’s fine,” Merle says, dropping his volume to match Davenport’s. “The look on their faces will be worth it.”

The feeling in his chest is a warm, steady comfort. It doesn’t overwhelm him. It doesn’t suffocate. It’s just a gentle reminder every time he looks at Merle that this is the life he’s chosen, and he wouldn’t change a thing.

So he kisses Merle softly and he says, “Thank you. For being with me all those years. For everything after that. I wouldn't chose anyone else to be by my side.”

Merle rests their foreheads together and Davenport lets his eyes slip closed. And for a single moment is it just the two of them, together, the only constant his life has ever known.

Merle kisses him and it feels like coming home after being away for far too long. It feels like something he didn’t know was missing until it was in front of him again.

And he opens his eyes and says, gently,  “Come on. We don’t want to be late.”

Merle offers his arm with a crooked grin and Davenport takes it. “Are you ready?”

And he is.

**Author's Note:**

> :D this started out as just me venting but it turned out to be really cathartic. This is my first taz fic so my apologies if the timeline/characterization/details were weird or ooc. (there's a scene where I quote the podcast for a bit in here, so please don't sue me)


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